Features of Business

Business activity, wherever it is carried on and whatever its size, shares a common set of features that distinguish it from other human activities:

• Economic activity -- business is undertaken to earn a livelihood and is measured in monetary terms; it is not a hobby, a social service, or a purely personal act.
• Production or exchange of goods and services -- a business either creates goods/services (a factory, a farm, a software firm) or moves already-produced goods/services from the producer to the consumer (a wholesaler, a retailer, a transporter).
• Continuity and regularity of dealings -- an activity has to be repeated to qualify as business; an isolated transaction, however profitable, is not by itself business.
• Profit motive -- earning profit is normally the primary driving objective, even where a firm also pursues social or human objectives alongside it.
• Uncertainty of return / element of risk -- because a business commits money and effort today for a return that will materialise only in the future, the size of that return -- and even whether there will be a return at all -- can never be guaranteed in advance.
• Two parties to every exchange -- a buyer and a seller (or, more broadly, a business and its customers) are always present; a business cannot exist without someone to sell to. …