Marc Wouters

2017

As many start-ups struggle with commercializing their product, the formulation of a customer value proposition (CVP) is considered as a useful tool to enter the market. To address this issue, this paper presents a framework illustrating how a financial CVP can be crafted and implemented at a high-tech start-up close to the market entry. Since the investigated start-up had not entered the market at the time this research project was conducted, necessary customer data was collected mainly by public available studies and two online surveys in social network expert groups. Due to very individual customer requirements of the investigated software industry, a parameterized CVP is developed which enables an individual customer value calculation based on dynamic input parameters. Thereby, the target market and two next-best alternatives of the start-ups’ offering as well as the most important buying selection criteria for a target customer are identified and translated into monetary terms by the framework. In this way, the paper provides evidence how these in the CVP theory essential dimensions can be analyzed in practice. As it was possible to craft a general and practical useful CVP approach in such an uncertain environment, this study extends the literature by providing a reference case for other companies, especially start-ups, having problems to formulate a CVP.