Boom or Bust

Boom or Bust: what makes a business successful?

This free game is part of our Pearson Edexcel iGCSE Business (4BS1) course for exams in EXAM YEARS 2026-2029.

How the game works

In Boom or Bust you run a street-food truck in a busy town square for five years. You drive into hungry shoppers to serve them, while bills for wages, rent and stock keep arriving. Each year adds one new idea from the Pearson Edexcel International GCSE Business specification (topic 1.8, What makes a business successful?):

• Year 1, Opening Year: revenue, profit and customer satisfaction.
• Year 2, A Rival Arrives: market share and growth, against a direct competitor.
• Year 3, Cash Crunch: big orders paid 30 days later, a late payer, a bad debt, a rainy spell and an unexpected repair bill.
• Year 4, Trend Shift: customers want plant-based food. Adapt, or watch a rival go bust because it didn't.
• Year 5, Boom or Bust: a price war, a recession, an overdraft cut and new technology, all at once.

At the end of each year a report shows your results, your stakeholders react, you decide what to do with the profit, and you answer questions that use your own numbers.

The seven measures of success

The specification lists seven ways to judge whether a business is successful. The game shows all seven on a live dashboard:

• Revenue: the money coming in from sales. Revenue = price × quantity sold.
• Profit: revenue − costs. High revenue is no good if costs are even higher.
• Market share: your sales ÷ total market sales × 100. The 3D pie in the fountain shows it live.
• Customer satisfaction: measured with reviews, surveys and repeat customers. Serve shoppers quickly for five stars.
• Growth: getting bigger: more sales, customers, staff or outlets. % growth = (new − old) ÷ old × 100.
• Employee satisfaction: measured with staff surveys, staff turnover and absence. An overworked kitchen makes staff unhappy.
• Owner or shareholder satisfaction: owners usually judge success by profit, dividends and growth.

Different stakeholders, different views of success

A business can look successful to one group and unsuccessful to another. In the game you choose what to do with each year's profit: pay the owners a dividend, give the staff a bonus, reinvest to grow the business, or keep the cash as a safety buffer. Each choice pleases some stakeholders and annoys others. This is the kind of trade-off you need to explain and evaluate in longer exam answers.

Why businesses fail

The specification gives three main reasons for business failure. Each one can sink your truck:

• Cash flow problems and lack of finance: profit is not the same as cash. If customers pay late, or money is tied up in stock, a profitable business can still run out of cash to pay its bills. Go past your overdraft limit and you are bust. Carillion collapsed in 2018 partly because it couldn't collect payments fast enough.
• Not being competitive: rivals with better prices, quality or service take your customers. A price war can leave everyone unable to cover their costs. Waterstones survived Amazon by being different, not cheaper.
• Failure to adapt to changes in the market: tastes, technology and the economy change. Blockbuster ignored streaming and went bankrupt in 2010.

If you go bust, the game tells you which reason caused it, with a real business example.

Exam tips

• Always show your working in calculations, and give market share and growth as percentages.
• Don't mix up revenue and profit, or profit and cash. Examiners test both.
• When asked how to judge success, say which stakeholder you mean: owners, staff and customers often want different things.
• For failure questions, link the cause to the effect: late payments → less cash coming in → can't pay suppliers or wages.