Business Paper 1 — Marketing and People

Topic frequency

How often each topic actually gets tested

Not an official Pearson weighting — Pearson doesn’t publish one for this paper. This is what this course’s own research found by reading real mark schemes and examiner reports series by series, counted honestly rather than assumed. Use it to prioritise review time, not to assume a topic near the bottom won’t appear.

Richest by series count

  • Demand, supply, PED and YED

    1.3.2

    Hit every one of the 7 series checked for it — the only spec point on this paper confirmed in literally every series reviewed, from demand/supply shift diagrams to PED and YED calculations.

  • Promotion, pricing and distribution

    1.3.3.3–1.3.3.5

    Produced at least one real question in all 6 of the 6 core series checked — nine confirmed sightings in total, most often a 6-mark Analyse landing on Section B's (c) sub-question.

Also very heavily tested

  • Meeting customer needs (markets, market research, market positioning)

    1.3.1

    19 confirmed real question hits across 8 of the 10 series checked, spanning the market, market research and market positioning — market positioning alone supplies 4 of this topic's 5 ten-mark Assess sightings.

  • Motivation and leadership

    1.3.4.4–1.3.4.5

    Seen in 5 of the 6 core series checked (every one but January 2023), and every confirmed sighting sits at 8 marks or above — often the paper's own 20-mark Section C essay.

Solidly, repeatedly tested

  • Marketing strategy and product (objectives, PLC, Boston Matrix, design mix)

    1.3.3.1–1.3.3.2

    Confirmed in 8 of the 12 series checked, with four genuine gap years including June 2024 — Boston Matrix, PLC, the marketing mix and B2B/B2C have each had a turn since 2019, most often at the (d) or (e) sub-question.

  • Staffing and organisational design

    1.3.4.1–1.3.4.3

    Confirmed in 4 of the 7 series checked, but with real precedent for carrying the whole paper — 3 of its 8 confirmed sightings are the 20-mark Section C essay outright, including the Toyota flexible-working and Unilever restructuring questions.

Thinner, but examinable

  • Entrepreneurs, objectives and business choices

    1.3.5

    Coverage is real but uneven: business objectives hit 4 of the 6 core series checked, while business choices (opportunity cost, trade-offs) was confirmed zero times in that same core pass — its one real sighting (opportunity cost) came only from an independent check of October 2024, not yet folded into the main count.