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Customers
Customers want businesses to offer quality products, provide good service and charge reasonable prices. Customers can be a very important stakeholder for a business. If a business makes decisions without considering the impact on its customers, it may lose the loyalty of those customers as they move to competitors.
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Suppliers
Suppliers have an interest in the performance and success of a business. They want that business to succeed so that it continues to buy the products/services it supplies. If a business failed, then this could have a negative impact on its suppliers as these suppliers would lose a source of their own income, which in turn could damage their performance/success.
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Government
The government is a stakeholder in all businesses – the more businesses exist, the more people are employed and paying taxes to the government. The businesses may also pay corporation tax to the government. All of this money can be used by the government to fund public services such as hospitals, schools, etc.
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Local community
People living in the local community may have an interest in or be affected by a business and its activities. A business can have both a positive and negative impact on the local community. For example, successful businesses can bring many benefits to a community, including increased employment opportunities, improved standards of living due to increased earnings, reduction in crime levels, etc. However, certain businesses could be potentially harmful to a community – for example, a business dealing in toxic waste processing could be harmful to members of the community, a business intending to build more houses in the community may be opposed by members of the community who do not want more people living near to them, etc – but it is worth noting that even though these businesses may be potentially harmful to a community, certain members of the community will gain benefit from them (for example, due to increased job opportunities).
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Competitors
Competitors will have a keen interest in a business’ activities. They will see the business as a rival and will want to see how the business is being run and how it is performing. Competitors may try to discover the business’ ideas, strategies and activities and then either copy or improve upon them in order to try and gain a competitive advantage. Competitors will follow the performance of the business as they will want to see rival businesses doing less well than they are doing.
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Interest and pressure groups
These groups are very wide and varied, and the type of interest or pressure will depend on the type/nature of business. One well-known pressure group is Greenpeace. This group works to lobby and apply pressure on businesses to make sure that they operate in a more environmentally conscious manner.
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Shareholders
A shareholder is a person who invests money into a business and, in return for this investment, they receive a share in the value of the business. These shares have a monetary value and may increase/decrease in value depending on the performance and overall value of the business. As shares have a financial worth, then shareholders have the potential to make money if the business performs well (similarly, they run the risk of losing money if the business performs badly). For this reason, shareholders are also stakeholders in a business – they have a keen interest in the business and will be directly affected (either positively or negatively) by the business’ performance.
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Finance providers
A business can receive finance/funding from a range of organisations (including banks and investment companies). If an organisation has invested funds into a business, it will take a keen interest in the performance of the business (it becomes a stakeholder). This is because the performance of the business will have a direct impact on how effectively the funding is being used and, if the business is successful, then the funding is likely to be repaid in a timely way.
