EXAMINER’S GENERAL COMMENTS AND STANDARD OF THE PAPER The paper described Bazar Stores Company Ltd (Bazar), a retailing store company that started as a family business and has since spread to most reginal and district capitals in Ghana with ongoing acquisition plan of Little Bee although not listed on stock market with challenging finance data, incomplete. Among the market leaders in Ghana, Bazar business model is not clear however there are number of challenges including Chairman dictatorship, high employees’ turnover, low remuneration and weak Human Resources and Organisation culture. As a result of the challenges, the management attempted to introduce various measures but with limited impact on the bottom-line profit. Corporate governance structure is not clear but made up of the executive management and the Chairman. No clear coordination between Regional Managers and District Management, resulting in mistrust due to unannounced visit to shop flows. Supply chain management system is fragmented with manufactures and small farmer who are segregated and treated differently resulting in tension amount the key stakeholders due to the practices of discrimination. The pre-seen was detailed and well-prepared candidates should have been able to provide good answers in the context of the retail stores industry. The unseen scenarios were interesting and presented some realistic questions on the industry. The standard of the paper was extremely good, and the questions were clear with preambles to assist candidates. The coverage was broad and in line with the syllabus. The paper was heavy on the strategic application. All the questions were based on the recommended syllabus and study material of the Institute. Marks allocation followed the weightings in the syllabus and was fairly distributed to each question.

PERFORMANCE OF CANDIDATES The overall performance of candidates was below expectation given how familiar or relatable the industry is and the depth of information provided especially the preseen. Many appeared to be ill-prepared for this examination and did not demonstrate the required level of technical knowledge and application of knowledge to the case study. Overall, candidates performed very well, especially question number Four and Six. There were a number of concerns relating to candidates performance in several other areas, this applies to most of questions especially question one, five and seven. In many cases candidates described wrong strategic models despite the fact that the questions required specific models. Model application to the case study remains a challenge to candidates resulting in loss of valuable marks to achieve a pass. All answers must be applied to the case study and should bring in aspects of the pre-seen information as well as the unseen (additional) information material. Answers which are purely rote learning were quite common in some requirements and this approach is awarded very low marks. There were also a number of candidates who gave very theoretical answers and did not apply them to the case study. Many candidatePage 2 of 38 answers lacked depth of development and therefore, although demonstrating a basic understanding and application of knowledge, they failed to accumulate sufficient marks due to not developing their answers sufficiently. Some answers were just shallow. Few candidates set their own question and answer which is very strange but evidence of lack of preparation