Week 1 — Inside or Outside? A First SWOT for a Pet-Grooming Van — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 1 of the term — sort a business's situation into what it controls and what it does not, and explain it to someone new to business.

This week you learned what a business is, who has a stake in it, and how to sort its situation into what sits inside it and what sits outside it. In this assignment you sort ten facts about one small business, interpret the sort, and explain it to someone who has never studied business. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Business Case Workshop practise the same ideas from other angles.

The task

The case is illustrative, built for this course and not a real business. A mobile pet-grooming van, with an owner who goes unnamed here, washes, trims, and dries dogs and cats in a van parked at each customer's home. Like the coffee cart this course follows, it is a business: it aims to take in more money than it spends. The owner has listed ten facts about the business and the world around it and wants to know where the business stands.

The ten facts:

• The owner has many years of grooming experience.
• The van brings grooming to customers' driveways, so pets skip a car ride.
• A waiting list of repeat clients books ahead.
• There is only one van, so only one pet can be groomed at a time.
• There is no online booking, so every appointment is set by phone.
• A large apartment complex that welcomes pets is opening nearby.
• A local animal shelter is looking for groomers to partner with on adoption days.
• Fuel prices are rising across the economy.
• A chain pet-supply store with its own grooming salon is opening in town.
• The city is considering a rule that limits where business vans may park on residential streets.

Work these two problems, showing how you sorted every fact:

1. How many of the ten facts sit inside the business, counting strengths and weaknesses together?
2. How many of the ten facts sit outside the business, counting opportunities and threats together?

Beside each answer, add a brief interpretation:

• Problem 1: name each inside fact as a strength or a weakness and give one reason it is inside the business. Then name the one outside fact that is most tempting to file as a strength, and explain in a sentence why it is not one.
• Problem 2: name each outside fact as an opportunity or a threat. Tag each with the PESTEL force it fits best (political, economic, social, technological, environmental, or legal), or say that it is a competitor, which a scan considers alongside the six forces. Then pick the city's parking rule and map at least four stakeholder groups it would touch (from owners, employees, customers, suppliers, lenders, the community, and government), saying in a few words how each could be helped or hurt.

Explain it to a non-expert

The owner's cousin, who may help with the van on weekends, asks you, "So is this business in trouble?" Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains the difference between what is inside the business and what is outside it, names the outside change you would watch most closely, and names one limit, including that a SWOT is a snapshot of one moment and that this case is illustrative. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible, and the message gives no legal or financial advice.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a flower stand at a train station. Model answer: "The stand's fresh flowers and friendly owner are things it controls, so they count as strengths. A new florist opening inside the station is outside its control, so it is a threat to watch, not a weakness. The biggest change to watch is the competitor, because commuters could buy flowers there instead. A list like this is only a snapshot; it can change as soon as the station or the owner does."

Use that pattern for the pet-grooming van, with your own wording and evidence.

Show your sort. A reader should be able to rebuild every count you report from the ten facts without guessing which box you put each one in.

Deliverables

Submit a single report containing:

• the two answers, each with the sort shown and the interpretation the task names for that problem;
• your message to the cousin, explaining inside versus outside, naming the change to watch, and naming one limit; and
• a SWOT grid listing all ten facts in their four boxes, so your counts are reproducible.

Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.

Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled sketch of the SWOT grid with a short note. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the sort, the counts, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without a chatbot or other AI tool. You may use a free spreadsheet to lay out the SWOT grid. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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