2.1 Business Activities

• Needs and wants
• Economic resources and their characteristics
• Scarcity, choice, opportunity cost and the scale of preference
• The importance of business activities in society
• Classification of business activities
• Micro and macro factors affecting business

• explain the concept of needs and wants as used in day-to-day life
• analyse the types of economic resources in the satisfaction of human needs and wants
• investigate the importance of business activities in society
• classify business activities in an economy
• examine the micro and macro factors that affect business activities
• appreciate the importance of business activities in an economy

“What is the role of business activities in an economy?”

“Why are economic resources important in the satisfaction of human wants?”

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1. Needs, wants, resources and scarcity
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   The difference between needs and wants, the economic resources used to satisfy them, and how scarcity forces choice and creates opportunity cost.
2. The importance, classification and factors of business activity
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   What business activities do for society, how they are classified, and the micro and macro factors that affect them.
3. Characteristics of human wants
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   How wants behave: they are insatiable, competitive, complementary, recurrent and they vary - which is why businesses keep finding customers and why we still have to choose.
4. Economic resources in the Kenyan economy
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   Land, labour, capital and enterprise with Kenyan examples, their rewards, and why idle resources still leave wants unmet.
5. Levels of production
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   Primary, secondary and tertiary production in Kenya, and why value addition keeps more income in the country.
6. The chain of distribution
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   How goods travel from producer to consumer through wholesalers and retailers, home trade and foreign trade, with the aids that keep the chain moving.
7. Micro and macro factors around a Kenyan kiosk
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   PESTLE and the micro environment applied to a mama mboga, kiosk or M-Pesa agent: what the owner can change, and what they can only prepare for.