Markets & Marketing Data | AQA A Level Business Exam Questions & Answers 2026 [PDF]

1

6 marks

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 E: Mishcon de Reya LLP profit and members, analyst estimates
Source: Analyst

Appendix E presents Mishcon de Reya LLP's profit and its number of members as index numbers, with 2021 set at 100.

Analyse one way in which presenting the two figures as index numbers might help the partners understand how the firm has grown.

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3

6 marks

Source A: Nationwide Building Society
Nationwide is the world's largest building society and the second largest mortgage lender in the United Kingdom. It is a mutual, which means it has no shareholders. It is owned by its members, who are the people who bank, save or hold a mortgage with it, and in principle every member is an owner. Nobody outside the membership has a claim on its profit.
That changes what profit is for. A listed bank divides its profit between dividends to shareholders and money kept in the business. Nationwide has no shareholders to pay, so it keeps almost all of its profit in the business to build its financial strength, and gives value to members in two other ways. The first is pricing, through better savings rates and lower mortgage rates. In the year to 31 March 2025 it put this at £1 795 million of member financial benefit, which is its estimate of how much better off its members were than they would have been with a typical high street bank. The second is direct payments: £1 000 million paid to eligible members through the Fairer Share Payment and a one-off reward called The Big Nationwide Thank You. Both reach members before profit is calculated, so neither is paid out of profit.
The year was a large one. On 1 October 2024 Nationwide completed the acquisition of Virgin Money, a bank with its own customers, brand and business lending arm. Statutory profit before tax rose to £2 302 million from £1 776 million, even after the direct payments to members. The rise was mainly due to a one-off accounting gain of £2.3 billion on buying Virgin Money, which arose because the assets acquired were valued at more than the £2.8 billion price. Underlying profit before tax, which leaves out one-off items and the direct payments, fell to £1 852 million from £2 003 million, which the society put down to its decision to pay members better rates. Total underlying income reached £5.2 billion, and Pay.UK switching data for the nine months to December 2024 showed more current account switchers moving to Nationwide than to any other brand.
Buying a bank is an unusual thing for a mutual to do. Virgin Money's customers did not choose a mutual, and integrating it will take years and a great deal of money. Every pound spent on that integration is a pound not returned to members this year, which is the tension the society is now living with.
Source: information sourced from Nationwide Building Society preliminary results for the year ended 31 March 2025

Appendix A: Nationwide Building Society selected results
Source: Nationwide Building Society

Pay.UK switching data showed more current account switchers moving to Nationwide Building Society than to any other brand.

Analyse one way in which this ranking might help Nationwide Building Society judge how well it is competing.

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4

6 marks

Source A: Bunzl plc
Bunzl plc is a distribution and services group. It does not make much: it buys products from manufacturers, holds them, and delivers them to businesses that need them regularly but do not want to manage the supply themselves. Its customers are in cleaning and hygiene, safety, healthcare, foodservice and grocery, and they are spread across more than 30 countries.
A hospital does not want to negotiate with forty suppliers for gloves, wipes and aprons. Bunzl sells it one relationship. That is the business.
The year to 31 December 2024 produced an odd set of numbers. Revenue was £11 776.4 million against £11 797.1 million, which is a fall of 0.2%. But at constant exchange rates, which strips out the effect of the pound moving against other currencies, revenue rose 3.1%. Adjusted operating profit rose 3.4% as reported and 7.2% at constant rates. Appendix B shows the two measures side by side.
The margin improved, from 8.0% to 8.3%. Bunzl puts that down partly to selling more of its own brand products, which it sources itself rather than buying from a manufacturer whose name is on the box, and partly to the businesses it has bought.
Buying businesses is how Bunzl grows. During 2024 it completed 15 acquisitions, 13 of them announced, and committed a record £883 million to them. Those businesses are expected to add £744 million of revenue and £72 million of adjusted operating profit in a full year.
Adjusted earnings per share reached 194.3p and the dividend rose 8.2% to 73.9p. Cash conversion was 93%.
Source: information sourced from Bunzl plc annual results for the year ended 31 December 2024

Appendix A: Bunzl plc selected results
Source: Bunzl plc

Appendix B: Bunzl plc growth, as reported and at constant exchange rates
Constant exchange rates restate the prior year using this year's exchange rates so that currency movements do not affect the comparison.
Source: Bunzl plc

Bunzl plc's revenue fell 0.2% as reported and rose 3.1% at constant exchange rates.

Analyse one way in which these two figures might affect how Bunzl plc's managers judge its sales growth in 2024.

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5

6 marks

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 the largest pet food market 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

Meadowbank Pet Foods Ltd's revenue grew from £8.20 million to £9.02 million last year. Its revenue in Ireland grew from £0.38 million to £0.62 million over the same period.

Analyse one way in which looking at growth in each market separately might affect the decisions Ros Calderwood makes about where to sell.

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6

6 marks

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

Appendix A shows that Pelham Audio Ltd sold 6 800 units to recording studios last year and 33 400 units to home producers.

Analyse one way in which looking at units sold as well as revenue might affect what Nadia Sokolova understands about her customers.

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7

6 marks

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.

The market report Marchmont Paper Co. Ltd buys covers sales made through stationery shops only. Just over half of Marchmont Paper Co. Ltd's own UK sales are made on its website.

Analyse one way in which this might affect the conclusions Marchmont Paper Co. Ltd draws about its share of the market.

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1

9 marks

Source A: Kids Planet Day Nurseries Ltd
Kids Planet Day Nurseries Limited runs day nurseries for children below school age. Clare Roberts set the business up in Cheshire in 2008 and has been a director since the August of that year. Its registered activity is pre-primary education and its head office is still in Lymm, near Warrington.
The company has grown mainly by buying other nurseries rather than by building new ones. It is now the parent of a group of 152 companies, most of them businesses it has taken over, and it holds 69 properties, 28 of which it owns outright and 41 of which it leases. It employs around 5 000 people. There is a single shareholder.
Growth has been fast. Turnover rose by 42.3% in the year to 31 March 2025, reaching £204.56 million, and cash at the bank more than doubled. But buying nurseries has been paid for largely by borrowing. The group's total liabilities are now slightly larger than its total assets, which means its net assets are negative. That figure is moving in the right direction: net assets improved from minus £16.04 million to minus £3.50 million over the year.
The number of children available to fill nursery places is not fixed. Live births in England and Wales have fallen in three of the past four years, from 624 828 in 2021 to 585 396 in 2025. Appendix B shows the trend. The government also pays for a set number of childcare hours for many families, so a nursery's income comes partly from parents and partly from the state.
The directors must now decide whether to carry on buying nurseries.
Source: information sourced from Companies House and the Office for National Statistics, 2026

Appendix A: Kids Planet Day Nurseries Ltd selected financial data
Source: Companies House

Appendix B: Live births in England and Wales
Source: Office for National Statistics

Assess whether the fall in the number of live births is likely to reduce Kids Planet Day Nurseries Ltd's revenue.

Calculate the percentage change in live births between 2021 and 2025 to support your answer.

Give your answer to one decimal place.

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2

9 marks

Source A: Kids Planet Day Nurseries Ltd
Kids Planet Day Nurseries Limited runs day nurseries for children below school age. Clare Roberts set the business up in Cheshire in 2008 and has been a director since the August of that year. Its registered activity is pre-primary education and its head office is still in Lymm, near Warrington.
The company has grown mainly by buying other nurseries rather than by building new ones. It is now the parent of a group of 152 companies, most of them businesses it has taken over, and it holds 69 properties, 28 of which it owns outright and 41 of which it leases. It employs around 5 000 people. There is a single shareholder.
Growth has been fast. Turnover rose by 42.3% in the year to 31 March 2025, reaching £204.56 million, and cash at the bank more than doubled. But buying nurseries has been paid for largely by borrowing. The group's total liabilities are now slightly larger than its total assets, which means its net assets are negative. That figure is moving in the right direction: net assets improved from minus £16.04 million to minus £3.50 million over the year.
The number of children available to fill nursery places is not fixed. Live births in England and Wales have fallen in three of the past four years, from 624 828 in 2021 to 585 396 in 2025. Appendix B shows the trend. The government also pays for a set number of childcare hours for many families, so a nursery's income comes partly from parents and partly from the state.
The directors must now decide whether to carry on buying nurseries.
Source: information sourced from Companies House and the Office for National Statistics, 2026

Appendix A: Kids Planet Day Nurseries Ltd selected financial data
Source: Companies House

Appendix C: Kids Planet Day Nurseries Ltd scale
Companies in the group = 152
Properties held = 69 (28 owned outright, 41 leased)
Employees = about 5 000
Year the business was set up = 2008
Source: Companies House

Assess whether being part of a group of 152 companies is likely to make Kids Planet Day Nurseries Ltd more competitive than nurseries that run only one or two sites.

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3

9 marks

Source A: The Gym Group plc
The Gym Group plc runs low cost gyms. It opened its first in 2008 and is now a public limited company with shares traded on the London Stock Exchange. It describes itself as a leading low cost gym operator and its offer as high value, low cost. Members pay by the month, there is no long contract to sign, and the gyms are open 24 hours a day.
The company calls its approach a labour light business model. Gyms are largely self-service, so a site can run with a small team, and the savings go into the price rather than into staff on the front desk. In the six months to 30 June 2026 The Gym Group had an average of one million members, up 5% on the same period a year earlier, and average revenue per member per month rose 5%.
Growth comes from two places. The company opens new gyms, and it improves the ones it already has. Four new sites opened in the first half of 2026, with eleven more being built, and it expects to open at least 20 during the year as part of a plan to open around 75 over three years, paid for out of its own cash. It also refurbishes older gyms to a newer design. Three were refurbished in the first half of 2026 and eighteen more were planned for the second half. Gyms refurbished during 2025 went on to win 10% more members than before.
The business is not short of demand, but it is carrying a lot of debt. At the end of 2025 its total liabilities were £474.2 million against total assets of £615.9 million, and it held only £3 million in cash. The company says its aim is a 30% return on the money invested in its mature gyms, and it is buying back some of its own shares.
Source: The Gym Group plc interim results, 9 September 2026, and Companies House

Appendix A: The Gym Group plc results for the six months ended 30 June 2026
Source: The Gym Group plc

Assess which contributed more to The Gym Group plc's revenue growth in the six months to 30 June 2026: the number of members, or the amount each member paid.

Calculate the percentage change in The Gym Group plc's revenue between the six months ended 30 June 2025 and the six months ended 30 June 2026 to support your answer.

Give your answer to one decimal place.

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6

9 marks

Source A: Softcat plc
Softcat plc sells technology to other organisations. If a company needs 400 laptops, a new firewall, a cloud contract and someone to set it all up, it can deal with a dozen manufacturers or it can deal with Softcat. It is a public limited company listed in London, and it sells to about 10 200 customers: businesses of every size and a large amount of public sector work.
Softcat does not describe its own size the way most companies do, and the reason is worth understanding. When it sells a laptop it buys the laptop and sells it on, so the whole price counts as its revenue. When it sells a software licence it is acting more as an agent for the software company, and accounting rules require it to count only the commission it keeps, not the price the customer paid. Two sales of exactly the same value to the customer therefore appear in Softcat's accounts at completely different sizes.
That is why it publishes a third figure. Gross invoiced income is the total value of everything it invoiced, whichever way the accounting treats it, and Softcat regards gross profit as its main measure of scale.
In the year to 31 July 2025 all three grew, and none of them agreed with the others. Gross invoiced income rose 26.8% to £3 617.0 million. Revenue rose 51.5% to £1 458.4 million. Gross profit rose 18.3% to £494.3 million. Statutory operating profit rose 12.2% to £172.9 million and underlying operating profit rose 16.9% to £180.1 million. Appendix B shows the three top-line measures together.
Behind all of it, the customer numbers barely moved. Softcat served 10 200 customers, 1.6% more than the year before, and gross profit per customer rose 16.5% to £48 500. It also completed its first acquisition.
Source: information sourced from Softcat plc preliminary results for the year ended 31 July 2025

Appendix A: Softcat plc selected results
Source: Softcat plc

Appendix B: Three measures of Softcat plc's size
Source: Softcat plc

Assess whether Softcat plc is likely to keep growing if the number of customers it serves stays flat.

Calculate Softcat plc's gross profit margin in the year to 31 July 2025 to support your answer.

Give your answer to one decimal place.

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1

15 marks

Source A: Bunzl plc
Bunzl plc is a distribution and services group. It does not make much: it buys products from manufacturers, holds them, and delivers them to businesses that need them regularly but do not want to manage the supply themselves. Its customers are in cleaning and hygiene, safety, healthcare, foodservice and grocery, and they are spread across more than 30 countries.
A hospital does not want to negotiate with forty suppliers for gloves, wipes and aprons. Bunzl sells it one relationship. That is the business.
The year to 31 December 2024 produced an odd set of numbers. Revenue was £11 776.4 million against £11 797.1 million, which is a fall of 0.2%. But at constant exchange rates, which strips out the effect of the pound moving against other currencies, revenue rose 3.1%. Adjusted operating profit rose 3.4% as reported and 7.2% at constant rates. Appendix B shows the two measures side by side.
The operating margin improved, from 8.0% to 8.3%. Bunzl puts that down partly to selling more of its own brand products, which it sources itself rather than buying from a manufacturer whose name is on the box, and partly to the businesses it has bought.
Buying businesses is how Bunzl grows. During 2024 it completed 15 acquisitions, 13 of them announced, and committed a record £883 million to them. Those businesses are expected to add £744 million of revenue and £72 million of adjusted operating profit in a full year.
Adjusted earnings per share reached 194.3p and the dividend rose 8.2% to 73.9p. Cash conversion was 93%.
Source: information sourced from Bunzl plc annual results for the year ended 31 December 2024

Appendix A: Bunzl plc selected results
Source: Bunzl plc

Appendix B: Bunzl plc growth, as reported and at constant exchange rates
Constant exchange rates restate the prior year using this year's exchange rates so that currency movements do not affect the comparison.
Source: Bunzl plc

Appendix C: Own brand and branded products, analyst estimates
Source: Analyst

In 2024 Bunzl plc's revenue fell 0.2% as reported, while its operating profit margin rose from 8.0% to 8.3%.

Evaluate whether Bunzl plc should judge its 2024 performance mainly on its sales growth or mainly on its operating profit margin.

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2

15 marks

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

Appendix B: Pelham Audio Ltd, survey of 400 home producers
Source: Analyst

Appendix A shows Pelham Audio Ltd's revenue in each of its four markets.

Evaluate whether Pelham Audio Ltd should use its sales figures or commission new research to decide which country to put money behind next.

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3

15 marks

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 B: Marchmont Paper Co. Ltd UK advertising spend and sales, by region
Source: Analyst

Appendix C: Two ways of setting next year's regional advertising budgets
Source: Analyst

Appendix C sets out two ways in which Marchmont Paper Co. Ltd could decide next year's advertising budget for each region.

Evaluate both ways and recommend which one would be the better for Marchmont Paper Co. Ltd.

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Markets & Marketing Data (AQA A Level Business): Exam Questions