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Show the importance of self-employment to the growth of the British economy.

Summary of the larger puzzles and issues:

Show the importance of self-employment to the growth of the British economy:

Self-employment is becoming increasingly popular in the British economy; in the year to September 2003 the number of self-employed people had increased by 282,000 or by 8.9%, Lindsay, C & Macaulay, C (2004).

The number of companies employing less than 10 people has increased from 1597 in 1979 to 2802 in 1989 to 3490 in 1999, Carter, S & Evans,J (2000).

Show the importance of the self-employment construction sector to the British Economy:

After banking, finance and insurance, construction is the second largest growing self-employment sector, the number of self-employed people working in the construction sector increased by 53000 in the year to September 2003, Lindsay, C & Macaulay, C (2004).

The construction sector is growing rapidly. In London, the value of contracts of construction grew from £7,428m in 1996 to £12,115m in 2001; the South East is the fastest growing area in the UK with regard to the construction sector, the numbers include work done by self-employed and small construction companies, National Statistics Bureau. See reference number 5 for detail.

Locating your work in a larger issue:

The researcher has to explain the wide reasons for self-employment, for example we write the following:

The government is increasingly interested in showing the public the importance of self-employment for the following reasons:

1. Downsizing:  what is the impact of downsizing on entrepreneurship and self-employment? Proposed answer: Big corporations in the British economy are constantly cutting down the number of employees working for them; this has made a large number of people start considering self-employment as an alternative source of income.
2. Lack of entrepreneurship: the British people are getting increasingly risk averse; this has a negative impact on economic growth because establishing new enterprises requires taking risks, the government is trying to help the people setting up new businesses to challenge the old ways of doing things.
3. Low living standards: many employed people see little chance in achieving their dreams because of the lack of opportunity especially in a very expensive city like London.
4. Top up fees: many student are finding it increasingly expensive to study in universities and students started thinking about starting their own businesses instead of getting loads of debt during their study.
5. Property prices: properties are seen as an investment as well as a saving vehicle to reserve the real value of the money, the increase in the prices of properties made many people start thinking about building properties or refurbishing them in order to sell it for a higher price, apart from the construction sector, people usually use their properties as a collateral to get credit from banks.
6. Lack of Equal opportunity: self-employment in the British economy is a common thing among the Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Chinese, Carter, S & Evans,J (2000). This belongs to the lack of opportunity and unequal treatment( see reference number 4).
7. Contribution to GDP: in 1997, small firms contributed to 39.5% to the GDP of the UK, Bank of England (1999).

It is worth mentioning that the UK has signed up to Lisbon Agreement (European Agreement), which tries to encourage innovation and R&D via encouraging small business.
The European Union urged national states to facilitate establishing small companies via ending state aid to big enterprises and open up markets for competition.
 
The writer may like to expand on explaining these points depending on the references.

Main research problem:

What determine the success of a self-employed person in the construction sector?

You can use the main question as a title as well to increase the interest in your dissertation.

The specific questions (proposed research questions):

The specific questions have to be in the context of answering the main question:

The first problem should be choosing the right strategy:

Why strategy? Strategy and marketing are very closely related ideas; we cannot develop marketing techniques in isolation of the strategy.

After choosing the strategy, the self-employed will not only develop marketing techniques but also integrated strategic marketing plan.

What is the successful strategy? 

The self-employed have to choose either cost-leadership or differentiation.  

It is clear that differentiation is a viable strategy but differentiation should be based on innovation to be sustainable.

The constructor has to introduce something new in the product or the process.

What is it?

The second problem should discuss market segmenting:

What is the market segment?

How can self-employed reaches a decision about a market segmenting?

Shall he target households? Which area? What age? What gender? What income level?

How to conduct a cheap and effective market research to answer the second question?

The third problem, how should a self-employed constructer build a database of customers to start marketing his products?

What are the most efficient marketing techniques for self-employed constructor?

Does direct marketing work? Why?

Which channels of direct marketing the self-employed constructor has to use?

What is the role of word of month?

How self-employed constructors can start turn their trade into small and medium size business?

How to encourage positive attitude towards entrepreneurs?

How to provide financing? How to build marketing strategy? And abide by laws of employment.etc?
 
In this research, we will give more weight to the marketing techniques rather than the marketing strategy and market segmentation.

Proposed theoretical framework:

Self-employment has attracted the interests of many academic writers and researcher because it is vital for the survival of the British economy.

Traditionally the work that has been done on strategy and marketing is amble but no proper attention has been given to strategy and marketing in the case of self-employed or small business.

The work that has been done on self-employment rarely mentioned how to sell or market the products.

Michael Porter (1985) built a theoretical framework for choosing the right corporate strategy.

Paul Burns(2001) talked about the importance of having trained marketing and sales force in order to grow in the market. Burns suggested using Tele-sale as an effective marketing tool  

Carter,S & Jones,E recommended entering into a niche market so the self-employed can hedge his market while he developing a more sophisticated marketing techniques, which should depend on direct marketing techniques.

Kotler, P., Armstrong, G., Saunders, J., and Wong, V. (2002) showed the importance of direct marketing and its different techniques and demonstrated how it could be successful in building a successful business.

Deakins, D., and Freel, M. (2003) talked about the importance and the difficulty of building marketing techniques, which are based on innovative self-employed strategy.

Federation of master builders and build to pro provide detailed information on how to build a successful building career: how to write a contract, prices and wages.

Environmental agency has published a website to increase the environmental awareness of constructors, self-employed constructors have to realise that they have responsibilities before they make profit.

The office of the deputy prime minister provides information about the current trends and government policies regarding construction this can be used in drawing a strategy.

Literature review:

Michael porter (1985) has talked about two types of strategies that are cost leader and differentiation. He did not explain how small businesses could adopt these strategies in the case of self-employed or small enterprise.

“ Flash Track” track strategy proposed by Atkinson, J (2001), develops a strategy which provides quick return on investment by outsourcing parts of the construction contract to experienced constructors who can finish the work as quickly as possible in order to get cash into the business.
This strategy suggests the constructor hiring the competitive advantage of other constructors in order to get cash into the business and gain reputation.

Alarcon, L(1997) proposed using a strategy called “lean construction”, which depends on improving the quality of the construction work via increasing the efficiency of the work and going down the learning curve.

Lipczynsky, J & Wilson, J (2001): shoed the importance of innovation on strategy and marketing techniques.

Innovation allows the self-employed to increase his price because he will be unique.

The self-employed constructor has to be innovative in providing his products and services; the environmental agency shows that the construction sector is co2 concentrated industry.

The environment is an important dimension of this industry, providing double glaze windows can help saving energy in houses.

Having environmental awareness is very important in building a competitive strategy and abiding by the new laws and regulations that the department of trade and industry is making in order to 

I have depended on the books that you referred me to, the books are too general, I will try in the following section to reflect direct marketing on self-employed construction employee/small-medium firm:
 
Doyle, P (2002) has suggested using Direct Marketing as a quick, efficient, cheap, convenient and easy way of marketing.
               
Doyle divided direct marketing techniques to online and offline.

Constructors can use direct mail as a way of marketing their services.

Direct mail is “one to many” marketing technique.

Direct mail proved to be a very effective way of marketing because it attracts the attention of the consumer and it supplies all the necessary information to him

In the construction sector, it is better to depend on direct mail because there is a high probability that the people will keep the letter especially if they had a problem before and they did not know whom to call.

It is better to concentrate on quality not price; many people are too busy to look for a cheap plumber to fix something in the house.

A lot of construction problems are urgent problems that need to be fixed as soon as possible.

People tend to find a plumber who can fix the problem and then they pay for it.

Why quality is essential and not price?

If the service of the constructor is good, old customers will recommend him to new customers and that’s how constructors get to gain new business.

Price promotions in the construction sector are not essential because people do not use these services until they really needed.

Households will not bring the plumber or the builders because he offered to give his services for half of the normal price.

Direct marketing in Kotler’s opinion is the most efficient way of selling goods and services because it communicates the information directly to the customer and it is quick in providing cash to the business.

Kotler showed the increasing importance of the Internet in promoting goods and services.

The Internet is very essential tool in getting business, website optimisation had made a large number of potential customers review your website.
 
The Internet can help constructors personalise their websites and give personal quotations to their customers.

Constructors can ask the visitors of the website to enter their details in order to receive more information or ask questions.

The information could be used in building a database of potential customers in order to target them more effectively using differentiated marketing technique.

Differentiated marketing depends on segmenting marketing according to region and income level, etc…

Differentiated marketing is very important in the construction industry, the services of the self-employed are limited and he should give different pricing to different geographical areas and different customers.

Evans, M & O’Malley, L & Patterson, M (2001) discussed that direct marketing depends on communicating information about products and services directly to customers.

Direct marketing is the opposite of mass marketing, mass marketing depends on telling a large number of people information about products and services through using mass media channels.

The authors concentrated on the fact that one to one direct marketing is the most effective forms of marketing.

Jobber, D. and Fahy, J. (2002) concentrated on the importance of choosing the right marketing mix: prices, promotion, place and product are very important to the success of any business.

In the case of self-employed constructor, price has to be above average in order to compensate for the innovation costs.

London is one of the most attractive places for self-employed constructors because of the huge value of construction contracts.

Promotion: as discussed earlier, direct mail, Internet and text messaging are the most effective tools.

They showed the importance of developing the right distribution channel

Deakins, D., and Freel, M. (2003): concentrated on researching the self-employment impact on the British economy and concentrated on the financial dilemma that the small enterprise faces.

The second part of the literature has concentrated on finding ways to make self-employment successful in creating jobs and SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) and become the engine of economic growth and develop his marketing techniques accordingly.

Henley,A (2002) has tried to analyse how successful self-employed people in creating jobs and establishing SMEs.

Proposed Research design:

Sample:

The sample will be several self-employed people using direct marketing techniques, the sample should show be unbiased.

The sample should concentrate on using text messaging, direct male, Internet and Tele-sales.

The researcher has to bear in mind that direct marketing techniques may not be successful if the self-employed chose the wrong strategy or the wrong market segment, Chadler, D (2004).

Data gathering:

From the sample that the researcher has chosen, he has to collect data to reflect the relationship between direct marketing techniques and sales.

Analysis:

The researcher should show through his research the most effective direct marketing technique for construction builders.

The researcher should use the following function: sales= Factor1* marketing technique1+ factor2* Marketing technique2+...

This relationship should show the most effective direct marketing technique in the construction industry.

Conclusion:

After finishing the analysis, the researcher has to conclude which marketing technique is more effective.

The researcher has to demonstrate the relationship between strategy and marketing techniques.

Wrong strategy may fail marketing techniques no matter how good they are.

References:

1. Lindsay, C & Macaulay, C (2004): Growth in self-employment in the UK, Labour Market Division. Office for National Statistics.
2. Henley,A (2002): job creation by the self-employed: the roles of the entrepreneurial and financial capital, research paper number 7.
3. Carter, S & Evans,J (2000): Enterprise and Small Business: Principles, Practice and Policy.
4. Ethnic Minorities and The Labour Market: Final Report,
   http://www.number10.gov.uk/su/ethnic%20minorities/report/ex_summary.htm

• National Statistics Bureau, Value of current prices of construction output for construction, 1996-2001.
• Bank of England (1999): The Financing of Ethnic Minority Firms In the United Kingdom, a special report.
• Porter, Michael (1985): Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance.
• Atkinson, J (2001): “Yolles Cashing on Flash Track” contract journal.
• Alarcon, L(1997): lean construction. A.A. Balkema, Rotterdam.
• Burns, P (2001): Entrepreneurship and small business, Palgrave.
• Deakins, D., and Freel, M. (2003): entrepreneurship and small business, third edition, Mc Graw-Hill Maidenhill.
• Evans, M & O’Malley, L & Patterson, M(2001): exploring direct and customer relationship marketing. 
• Chadler, D (2004): Writing your dissertation: some guidelines for university students.
• Jobber, D. and Fahy, J. (2002) Foundations of Marketing, McGraw-Hill, UK.
• Lipczynsky, J & Wilson, J (2001): Industrial Organization: an analysis of competitive markets, Chapter number 8. FT Prentice Hall.
• www.environment-agency.gov.uk/netregs/sectors - information on environmental legislation relating to construction/property.
• www.fmb.org.uk - Federation of Master Builders Website is the largest trade association in the UK building industry. 
• www.build2pro.co.uk - Online portal with comprehensive information for tradesman.
• www.odpm.gov.uk - Office of Deputy Prime Minister website has information relating to housing and building strategy and regulatory controls

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