Introduction, Characteristics of Business and Resources Business Use

December 15, 2023 Globalinfo247

This article about introduction to business introduces you to the business world. It starts by telling you what needs and wants are, how to make choices and what the business does, its objectives, and its characteristics.

The article equally introduces you to your role as a consumer, wage earner, and citizen. However, the article also gives you various definitions of business and how you can benefit from it so I recommend that you read through for more information.

What are Need and Want?

You can’t know what business is except you know some basic concepts.
Wants – these are things you wish you could have for instance you wish to have a jeep car, a job in NNPC, to be a governor.

Needs – these are necessities of life. You cannot do without them; they include food, shelter, and clothing. Your needs and wants are translated into goods and services.
Goods – They can be physically weight or measured e.g. bicycles.
Services – are tasks that people or machine performs. For example, A Doctor attending to your health problem.

You know that your resources are not enough to attend to all your problem. Resources mean anything you can use to value or obtain, what you need and want i.e. salary, influence, etc.

Making Choices

In making your choice between the list of goods and services, it means that there is a cost attached to it. For instance, if you have N200 to buy either a recharge card or go to town to see a friend.

If you decide to see a friend and not buy a card, then you have given up the latter which is an opportunity cost. Opportunity cost could be in terms of money or another item.

In making your choices you attach value and goals to the goods and services.
The value differs from product to product. While your goal equally determines your choices of products.

What is Business?

Brown et al (1997) say Business is all of the activities of an individual or group of individuals in producing and distributing goods and services to customers.

Business wants to know your needs, wants, goals, values, etc before they can sell their goods to you.
Business, therefore, is involved in the following activities.

Producing Goods and Services

The business provides goods and services to you. In today’s business goods and services are many.

Examples include;

For Goods: Handset, Cloth, Computer, Radio, House, etc.
For Services: Education, Doctor attending to you, traveling by air, lodging in a hotel, etc.

What a Business Does

A lot of activities happen before goods and services get to your doorstep. A product is not just made in a day and finds its way to the store.

These are some of the activities that are performed by the business.

Organizing – within a company, someone will be in charge to organize people and machines to provide products.

Manage – if there is no one to manage finance, human resources, and production, the company can’t go on smoothly.

Production – it is the responsibility of a business to produce that physical item you are using i.e. radio, wrist watches, etc.

Marketing – business is involved in advertising, distributing, and selling those products produced.

Resources Business Use

Companies use resources to be able to perform business functions. Resources that businesses will use include:-

Human Resources – salesmen, accountants, manager.
Materials – building offices, stores, raw materials for production.

The business decides on choices of how to combine their resources and many more every day at what cost to achieve their aim.

Characteristics of Business

The business has some of all of these characteristics:

Exchange sale or transfer of goods and services. For every business, there must be an exchange of goods and services for money.
Profit motive. Every business activity is for profit making. But profitable organizations and some corporations are established to provide services.

Dealing with goods and services. Every organization that is business-oriented, must produce goods and services.
Uncertainty and risk bearing.

Every business undertaking must take risks and there is always uncertainty. Uncertainty may arise as a result of competition, wrong decisions unethical.

Continuity and regularity. A business undertaking must always be in business and not on and off.

Objectives of Business

Profit: The aim of an organization is to make a profit
Survival: Every business must have a goal to continue to survive or exist.
Growth: A business must not only survive, but it must have as its goal to be the biggest.
Market share: Every business concern must be able to carry out its market share to control, and aid the sale of its product.
Productivity: It must continue to produce.
Innovation: Businesses must try to see that it‟s the first and best to bring up new ideas.
Employee’s welfare: Businesses must maximally want to take care of their workers.
Service to the consumer: Consumers are well satisfied as another objective of any business concern.
Social responsibility: Apart from doing 1-8 it must do other things that people around the business must benefit from.