Southeast Local Enterprise Partnership SELEP is a partnership between local government, business and

education to provide strategic leadership to drive sustainable public sector$-$led growth and job creation

in Southeast England that include Essex, Kent and Sussex. Its priority is to determine strategic economic

priorities, make investments, deliver activities to drive growth and create jobs. They focus on four

strategic priorities:

$$ Business resilience and growth

$$ UK$$s global gateway

$$ Communities for future

$$ Coastal catalyst

As part of their business strategy, they offer support to local businesses to access funding, organize

networking events, offer training to employees and provide mentoring support.

To equip businesses in this region withstand the turmoil in post$-$Covid times, SELEP has approached you

to know how they can offer further support to local businesses either $(1)$ in terms of increasing the levels

of present services $($such as access to funding, training or mentoring$)$ or $(2)$ offer something new that can

restore business confidence, propel economic growth or create better jobs for their employees and drive

economic prosperity in the region.

To help in their future strategy, you have been asked to:

a$)$ conduct secondary research $($from online sources$)$ to evaluate the barriers and facilitators for

business growth in Southeast of England$-$ create a summary table based on the findings,

b$)$ develop a sampling plan to recruit about $8-10$ small and medium business owners in this region

$($firms having employee size less than $250)$ as subjects to conduct an online focus group$-$ explain

how you use secondary data to derive profiles of businesses located in this region $($based on the

target segment$)$ and justify your sample choice,

c$)$ design the focus group discussion guide including the objectives of the focus group study,

potential stimuli topics that can be used to generate discussions and a moderator$$s outline $($as

discussed in this module$).$

d$)$ Explain how you can use the information derived from the focus group to answer the two

questions asked by SELEP.

Please include the focus group discussion guide including its components in the appendix