BST823 Individual Written Report Resit 2025 | CU

BST823 Individual Written Report

For this coursework, you are required to prepare a 2000-word report on supplier payment times for the following five supermarkets.

• Lidl Great Britain Ltd.
• Aldi Stores Ltd.
• Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd.
• Asda Stores Ltd.
• Tesco Stores Ltd.

The report should contain the following sections:

A. Introduction: set out the objectives of the report, data collection strategy, summary of results and conclusions. [100 words approx.]

B. Literature review: Review the academic and practitioner literature on supplier payment times and practices, covering the aspects listed below. [600 words approx.]

• Importance of on-time payment for suppliers
• Prevalence of late payment/non-payment across the industry
• Causes of late payment/non-payment by firms
• Negative effects of late payment/non-payment on suppliers and supply chains
• Solutions to late payment/non-payment

Note: the literature review should address how late payment is a problem across all industries, not just supermarkets.

C. Analysis: Perform an analysis of payment performance for the five supermarkets listed above. The analysis should include descriptive text and tables/charts/line charts, etc. You are expected to collect data on supplier payment times for each of the five supermarkets covering the years 2018-2024 inclusive. The measures of payment performance you are expected to analyse are set out below. [900 words approx.]

• Average time to pay suppliers (in days).
• % breakdown of time to pay suppliers by < 30 days, 31-60 days, 61+ days.
• % invoices not paid to suppliers within the agreed terms, i.e., non-compliant.
• Shortest (standard) and maximum contractual period to pay suppliers.
• Whether a firm participates in payment codes, uses e-invoicing and offers SCF (yes/no).

D. Discussion: Discuss the overall performance of the five supermarkets when it comes to paying suppliers, noting any changes throughout analysis. Reflect on whether their performance needs to improve and, if so, indicate what action they should take to ensure suppliers receive payment on time and as agreed. [400 words approx.]

Assignment Guidelines

• The word limit for the report is 2000 +/-10%.
• References are not included in the word limit.
• Sources for the literature review can be academic and practitioner.
• Numeric data on supplier payment times is available from the UK Government at the following link. You can search for firms individually, or you can download the population of firms as a CSV file.
• Information on the Fair Payment Code can be found on the Small Business Commissioner website
• Ensure that all source material is correctly cited in the text and referenced in the bibliography. Follow the Cardiff-Harvard Referencing system
• Use headings for each section in the report.
• Add titles to any figures or tables used, e.g., Figure 1: Trends in supplier payment times. Table 1: Average payment time.
• ChatGPT or other AI-generative software is not permitted for use on this report. Using it will be considered Academic Misconduct. I want you to use your intelligence in compiling the report, not artificial intelligence!

Assessment type: Individual written report. Do not share your work with others. Do not use ChatGPT or other AI-generative software to write your report.

Weighting: 100%

Assessment criteria: see marking rubric below in Table 1.

Submission procedure: Turnitin on BST823 Learning Central.

Table 1 Marking rubric

	80%+	70-79%	60-69%	50-59%	40-49%	<40% (Fail)
Comprehension	Excellent understanding of current academic and industry debates concerning supplier payment times.	Very good understanding of current academic and industry debates concerning supplier payment times.	Good understanding of current academic and industry debates concerning supplier payment times, but with some minor errors or omissions.	Adequate understanding of current academic and industry debates concerning supplier payment times. Some major errors or omissions.	Basic understanding of current academic and industry debates concerning supplier payment times. Major errors or omissions.	Poor or no understanding of current academic and industry debates concerning supplier payment times.
Research	Excellent level of	High level of	Good level of	Adequate level of	Basic level of	Little or no
	proficiency in	proficiency in	proficiency in	proficiency in	proficiency in	evidence of
	researching the	researching the	researching the	researching the	researching the	having carried out
	supplier payment	supplier payment	supplier payment	supplier payment	supplier payment	research on
	times of selected	times of selected	times of selected	times of selected	times of selected	supplier payment
	firms, using	firms, using	firms, using	firms, using	firms, using	times of selected
	numeric and text	numeric and text	numeric and text	numeric and text	numeric and text	firms, using
	data from	data from	data from	data from	data from	numeric and text
	appropriate	appropriate	appropriate	appropriate	appropriate	data from
	sources.	sources.	sources. Some	sources. Some	sources. Major	appropriate
			minor errors or	major errors or	errors or	sources.
			omissions.	omissions.	omissions.
Analysis	Excellent analysis	Very good	Good analysis and	Adequate analysis	Basic analysis and	Little or no
	and discussion of	analysis and	discussion of the	and discussion of	discussion of the	evidence of
	the supplier	discussion of the	supplier payment	the supplier	supplier payment	having analysed
	payment time	supplier payment	time performance	payment time	time performance	supplier payment
	performance of	time performance	of selected firms,	performance of	of selected firms.	time performance
	selected firms.	of selected firms.	but with some	selected firms.	Major errors or	of selected firms.
					omissions.

			minor errors or omissions.	Some major errors or omissions.
Communication	Excellent written,	Very good	Good written,	Adequate written,	Basic written,	Poor written,
	presentation and	written,	presentation and	presentation and	presentation and	presentation and
	referencing skills.	presentation and	referencing skills,	referencing skills.	referencing skills.	referencing skills.
		referencing skills.	but with minor	Some major errors	Major errors or
			errors or stylistic	or stylistic	stylistic problems.