International Marketing (AQA A Level Business): Exam Questions

Source B: Mishcon de Reya LLP

Mishcon de Reya LLP is a law firm. It advises businesses and wealthy individuals on disputes, property, corporate deals and private matters, and it is led by managing partner James Libson. It has offices in London, Cambridge and Oxford, and overseas in Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. About 1 250 people work there, including more than 650 lawyers.

It is not a company. It is a limited liability partnership, which means it is owned by its members, the partners, rather than by shareholders. Members put capital into the firm when they join and take a share of the profit rather than a salary. Nobody outside the partnership owns any part of it.

The year to 31 March 2025 was the firm's best. Revenue rose 9% to £330 million and profit rose 14% to £110 million, the first time it has passed £100 million. The firm says it has tripled in size over the past decade. Its work during the year included advising Wayve on what it describes as Europe's largest artificial intelligence investment and defending O2 in a collusion claim.

Growing has meant admitting people. Sixteen new partners joined during the year and a further 27 people were promoted to partner from inside the firm, alongside 13 promotions to legal director. There are now more than 200 partners. As in any partnership, some members retire or leave each year, so membership grows by less than the number admitted.

That is the tension the firm is sitting with. In a partnership the profit is divided between the members, so every partner admitted is another share of the same pool. The firm now has to decide where its next stage of growth should come from: more partners in the United Kingdom, where it already has three offices and knows the market, or a bigger presence in Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, where the offices exist but are small. Appendix F sets out the two options.

Source: information sourced from Mishcon de Reya LLP, results for 2024/25

Appendix D: Mishcon de Reya LLP selected results

Source: Mishcon de Reya LLP; 2024 partner number from analyst estimates

Assess whether having offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates is likely to increase Mishcon de Reya LLP's revenue.

Source B: Cranswick plc

Cranswick plc makes food. It is a public limited company listed on the London Stock Exchange and it supplies fresh pork, poultry, cooked meats, pastry, sandwiches and pet food to supermarkets, to foodservice customers such as restaurant chains, and to export markets.

The year to March 2025 was a strong one. The previous financial year was 53 weeks long, so the company compares the two years on a 52-week basis. On that basis, revenue rose 6.8% to £2 723.3 million and adjusted profit before tax rose 14.3% to £197.9 million. Reported profit before tax was £181.6 million. Like-for-like revenue, which strips out the effect of businesses bought or sold, rose 6.4%.

The volume figure is the interesting one. Cranswick sold 7.7% more food than the year before, which is more than its revenue grew. Appendix E shows what has been happening to volumes and to the average price of a unit over five years: prices rose steeply through the inflation of 2022 and 2023, and have now started to come back down while volumes keep climbing.

The company has been spending. Capital investment reached a record £138 million, up from £91 million, going into extra capacity and into making its existing factories more efficient. Its largest customers are a small number of supermarkets, each of which buys in enormous quantities and negotiates hard.

Cranswick has raised its dividend every year for 35 years, and raised it again this year by 12.2% to 101.0p a share.

Source: information sourced from Cranswick plc preliminary results for the year ended March 2025

Appendix D: Cranswick plc selected results

Source: Cranswick plc

Assess whether selling to export customers as well as to UK supermarkets is likely to make Cranswick plc's revenue more secure.

Source A: PZ Cussons plc

PZ Cussons plc owns personal care and beauty brands. In the United Kingdom it owns Carex, the best-selling hand wash, Original Source, Imperial Leather, Childs Farm, which is made for babies and children, and St Tropez, which is self-tanning. It does not own shops: its products reach customers through supermarkets, pharmacies, discounters and beauty retailers. It is a public limited company listed in London.

Much of the business is not in Britain at all. PZ Cussons plc has sold in Nigeria for more than a century and manufactures there, and it also sells across Asia Pacific. That reach is the source of both its growth and its biggest problem.

In the year to 31 May 2025 like-for-like revenue, which strips out the effect of currency changes, grew 8.0%, mostly because of price rises in Nigeria, where the volume sold fell. Reported revenue, which is what the accounts say, fell 2.7% to £513.8 million from £527.9 million. The difference is the Nigerian naira. The currency was stable through the year, but it averaged 38% below where it had been the year before, so every naira of Nigerian sales turned into far fewer pounds.

Adjusted operating profit was £54.9 million against £58.3 million, and the operating margin slipped to 10.7% from 11.0%.

The UK brands did not all pull the same way. Carex grew both its revenue and its gross margin, and held its position as the largest hand wash brand. St Tropez had a difficult year: its revenue fell by a double-digit percentage, reflecting weak demand for self-tan in the United States, while like-for-like revenue in Europe and the Americas grew only 0.6%. The company considered what to do with St Tropez and decided to keep it, saying it would give the brand a new direction.

Source: information sourced from PZ Cussons plc preliminary results for the year ended 31 May 2025

Appendix A: PZ Cussons plc selected results

Source: PZ Cussons plc

Assess whether PZ Cussons plc should reduce how much of its business depends on Nigeria.

Source A: Pelham Audio Ltd

Pelham Audio Ltd designs and builds studio headphones and microphones in Cambridge. It is a private limited company founded by Nadia Sokolova and it employs 41 people, fourteen of them engineers.

For twenty years its customers were recording studios: a few thousand of them worldwide, buying expensive equipment and keeping it for a decade. That is still where the reputation comes from. It is no longer where most of the units go. Podcasters, musicians recording at home and people making video for a living now buy more Pelham Audio Ltd equipment than studios do, at less than a fifth of the price per item.

Last year revenue was £7.8 million. The United Kingdom accounted for £3.1 million, the United States £2.4 million, Germany £1.5 million and Japan £0.8 million. Everything is sold either through specialist dealers or directly from the company's own website.

Nadia Sokolova has spent money on finding things out. The company now knows what each dealer sells, what its website visitors look at before they buy, and what its customers say when asked. In February it commissioned a survey of 400 home producers, which found that 62% would pay more for a microphone that plugs straight into a computer without a separate audio interface. The research company reported the result with a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

The data has produced two questions rather than one answer. The first is which country to put money behind next. The second is larger: whether Pelham Audio Ltd is a company that makes equipment for studios and happens to sell some to home producers, or the other way round.

Appendix A: Pelham Audio Ltd, revenue by market and by customer

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Pelham Audio Ltd should focus its next marketing spending in the United States.

Source A: Marchmont Paper Co. Ltd

Marchmont Paper Co. Ltd makes notebooks, planners and page-a-day diaries in a converted mill in Hebden Bridge. It is a private limited company owned by Ines Marchmont and Tom Prideaux, and it employs 28 people. The paper is milled in Cumbria, the covers are cloth-bound by hand, and a planner sells for around £24.

Revenue last year was £3.8 million. Of that, £2.7 million came from the United Kingdom, £664 000 from Japan, £397 800 from France and £38 200 from everywhere else. Inside the UK figure, £1.4 million was taken on Marchmont Paper Co. Ltd's own website and £1.3 million through about 400 independent stationers and one department store chain.

Ines Marchmont buys a market report each year. It values the UK market for premium paper stationery at £210 million and covers sales made through stationery shops only. Marchmont Paper Co. Ltd's shop sales of £1.3 million give it a share of 0.62% on that basis. Just over half of what the company actually sells in the UK is not in the report at all.

The marketing objective for this year, written into a plan every January and reviewed the following January, is to grow revenue by 25%.

Japan is where the plan has been working and not working at the same time. Until 2024 Marchmont Paper Co. Ltd sold direct to about 90 Japanese shops. In 2025 it moved to a single distributor, which buys in bulk and sells on. The number of items sold rose sharply. What came back did not.

Marchmont Paper Co. Ltd knows very little about who buys its planners. The website asks one question at checkout, "what will you use this for?", and roughly a fifth of customers answer it. Nobody has ever spoken to a customer who bought from a shop.

Appendix A: Marchmont Paper Co. Ltd sales outside the UK

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Marchmont Paper Co. Ltd should continue to sell in Japan through a distributor.

Calculate the average revenue Marchmont Paper Co. Ltd received for each item sold in Japan in 2025 to support your answer.

Give your answer to the nearest penny.

Source A: MPB Group Ltd

MPB Group Limited buys and sells used cameras and video equipment. Matt Barker founded the business in Brighton in 2011. Customers can sell their old equipment to MPB, trade it in against something else, or buy used gear at a lower price than new. The company recirculates around 570 000 items a year, and says it wants to extend the life of photo and video equipment rather than see it sit unused in a drawer.

Everything is bought and sold through MPB's own website. There are no shops. The company has offices in Brighton, Brooklyn and Berlin, so it trades in the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany. Every item is inspected by a product specialist and graded for its condition, then sold with a twelve-month warranty. Prices are set by the make, model, condition and the market the item is being sold in.

Because MPB has no shops and does not advertise on television, almost all of its customers arrive through a search engine. Some of those visits are earned, when MPB's own articles, reviews and buying guides appear in the search results without being paid for. Others are bought, when MPB pays to appear above the free results and is charged every time somebody clicks.

MPB has grown quickly. Turnover rose by 15.5% in the year to 31 March 2025 and the company took on 49 more staff. Some of that growth has been funded by borrowing. Over the same year total liabilities rose by 22.7% while net assets fell by 19.7%. Matt Barker is still a director, but he no longer runs the company alone. In 2021 an outside investment company placed directors on the board, and MPB now has 16 shareholders and an independent chairman.

MPB wants to sell more in the United States and Germany. It could spend more on paid search advertising, or it could invest in its own content so that more customers find it without a payment being made for every click.

Source: information sourced from Companies House and MPB Group Ltd, 2026

Appendix A: MPB Group Ltd selected financial data

Source: Companies House

Appendix B: MPB Group Ltd marketing budget for the year ended 31 March 2025

Source: Analyst

Appendix C: MPB Group Ltd selected information

• Items recirculated each year = 570 000

• Offices = Brighton, Brooklyn and Berlin

• Warranty offered on every item sold = 12 months

• Employees, 2025 = 493 (2024: 444)

• Turnover growth, 2024 to 2025 = 15.5%

Source: MPB Group Ltd

MPB Group Ltd wants to increase its sales in the United States and Germany.

Evaluate whether MPB Group Ltd should spend more on paid search advertising or invest in its own content.

Source A: Meadowbank Pet Foods Ltd

Meadowbank Pet Foods Ltd makes dry dog food at a single factory in Shropshire. It is a private limited company owned by Ros Calderwood, who started it after eleven years as a vet, and it employs 34 people.

It does not sell in supermarkets and has never wanted to. Its food reaches customers through independent pet shops, veterinary practices and its own website, where about a third of customers buy on a repeating subscription. A 12 kilogram bag costs £48. Supermarket own label sells at around £22 for the same weight, and the mid-range brands sit between the two.

What the company sells is an explanation. Every bag lists the percentage of each ingredient, names the farm the meat came from and carries a batch number that a customer can look up. Ros Calderwood's view is that people who read the label are the only customers worth having, because they are the ones who do not switch when a rival runs a promotion.

Last year Meadowbank Pet Foods Ltd took £9.02 million, up from £8.20 million. Almost all of it is still British: £8.06 million against £7.71 million the year before. The two export markets are small and growing quickly. Ireland went from £0.38 million to £0.62 million and the Netherlands from £0.11 million to £0.34 million, both sold through independent pet shops in the same way as at home.

Ros Calderwood has £400 000 to spend and two ways to spend it. She has been offered a distributor in Germany, which is one of the largest pet food markets in Europe and one Meadowbank Pet Foods Ltd has never sold into. Or she can spend the money at home, where growth has slowed to 4.5% and where nine tenths of the revenue already is.

Before deciding anything she ran a test. For three months the price of the 12 kilogram bag went up from £48 to £52, and she watched what happened to the number of bags sold.

Appendix A: Meadowbank Pet Foods Ltd, revenue by market

Source: Analyst

Appendix C: Data for two ways of spending £400 000

Source: Analyst

Appendix C shows two ways in which Ros Calderwood could spend £400 000.

Evaluate whether Meadowbank Pet Foods Ltd should enter Germany through a distributor or spend the money in the United Kingdom.

Source A: Rowan & Pine Ltd

Rowan & Pine Ltd makes wooden toys in a workshop near Totnes: stacking rings, shape sorters, pull-along animals and a train set that has been in the range since 1998. It is a private limited company owned by Marta Lindqvist and employs 46 people.

It sells in two ways. A little under half its revenue comes from its own website, and the rest from independent toy shops and two department store chains. Last year revenue was £5.4 million, of which £3.60 million was in the United Kingdom, £0.90 million in Germany, £0.60 million in the United States and £0.30 million elsewhere.

The website has been the focus of the last three years and the traffic shows it. Visits rose from 1 040 000 to 1 420 000. Orders rose from 31 200 to 38 900. Marta Lindqvist has noticed that the second number has not kept up with the first and has not yet decided what to do about it.

There is something else she has not decided what to do about. Every box in the range carries the line "supports early problem-solving and fine motor development". It comes from a study of 34 children carried out six years ago by a university department, which Rowan & Pine Ltd part-funded. Nobody has repeated it. The claim has never been challenged, and it appears on packaging in three countries.

Marta Lindqvist has £200 000 to put behind one overseas market. Germany is the larger of the two and sells almost entirely through toy shops. The United States is smaller, growing faster, and sells almost entirely through the website.

Appendix B: Rowan & Pine Ltd revenue by market

Source: Analyst

Appendix C: Data for the two overseas markets

Source: Analyst

Appendix C compares the two overseas markets Rowan & Pine Ltd already sells in.

Evaluate whether Rowan & Pine Ltd should put its £200 000 into Germany or into the United States.