Syllabus: OCR - GCSE Business
Module: 2. Marketing
Lesson: 2.1 The Role of Marketing
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Introduction
This article focuses on Unit 2.1: The Role of Marketing from the OCR GCSE Business specification. It’s a foundational topic designed to help students understand the purpose and functions of marketing within a business. This unit is critical not only because of its assessment weight but because it builds commercial awareness and introduces key business thinking early on.
OCR’s approach is practical and context-rich, encouraging learners to analyse how businesses identify and meet customer needs. Teachers can confidently align this lesson with OCR’s official syllabus knowing it integrates naturally into broader curriculum themes like customer satisfaction, market research, and enterprise decision-making.
Key Concepts
Students are expected to:
Understand what is meant by marketing.
Explain the main purposes of marketing, including identifying, anticipating, and satisfying customer needs.
Explore how marketing contributes to business success, including generating sales and informing product development.
Understand how marketing supports decision-making across other functions such as finance, operations, and human resources.
This unit introduces students to the interdependence between departments, highlighting marketing’s role in the wider business ecosystem. It sets the stage for more detailed work on the marketing mix in later units.
Real-World Relevance
Marketing is one of the most visible functions in business. Use relatable case studies like:
Greggs’ vegan product range—launched in response to shifting customer preferences and amplified by strategic marketing campaigns.
Nike’s direct-to-consumer strategy—cutting out intermediaries to control customer experience and brand positioning.
Local businesses using Instagram for customer engagement—showing how even sole traders use marketing tools effectively.
Bringing in these examples helps students connect textbook concepts to the world they already understand and engage with.
How It’s Assessed
In OCR GCSE Business, questions related to 2.1 may include:
Multiple-choice questions to test definitions and purpose.
Short-answer questions such as “State two purposes of marketing.”
Data-response tasks, where students must apply knowledge to a business scenario.
Extended response questions requiring students to explain how marketing helps a business achieve its aims or make informed decisions.
Key command words include:
Explain – state and develop a concept or process.
Analyse – build logical reasoning to show relationships or consequences.
Evaluate – assess different viewpoints or outcomes, leading to a supported judgement.
Enterprise Skills Integration
This topic is rich with active learning opportunities that build enterprise skills:
Decision-making: What products should a business launch? What market should they target?
Problem-solving: How could a business respond to changing customer needs?
Creative thinking: Design a basic campaign to launch a new school snack bar.
Communication: Present marketing ideas and justify them based on customer needs.
Enterprise Skills’ Business Simulations are ideal for embedding this topic. Students take on real roles, make marketing decisions, and see the consequences—plug-and-play sessions that bring the syllabus to life.
Careers Links
Teaching this unit is a prime opportunity to meet Gatsby Benchmark 4 (Linking curriculum learning to careers) and Benchmark 5 (Encounters with employers and employees):
Marketing roles: digital marketer, brand manager, market researcher.
Entrepreneurship: understanding marketing is essential for starting any business.
Cross-department careers: how marketing interacts with finance, product design, and HR.
Use videos, guest speakers, or Enterprise Skills simulations to simulate real marketing challenges and decisions.
Teaching Notes
Practical Tips:
Start with products students use daily—why do they buy them? Who are they aimed at?
Use customer persona templates to help students define target markets.
Run mini ‘focus group’ activities or simple surveys to discuss how businesses gather insight.
Common Pitfalls:
Confusing marketing with advertising—emphasise that marketing is broader.
Underestimating the role marketing plays across a business—not just in sales, but in product and strategy decisions.
Extension Activities:
Analyse a failed product and explore what went wrong in the marketing process.
Use Enterprise Skills’ Skills Hub to drop in assessment-style tasks or model answers—saving planning time and reinforcing application.
