Markus Kirchberger

2015

This paper describes and analyses in retrospective, how the process of crafting a customer

value proposition (CVP) was done in an IT startup company in Karlsruhe, Germany. It also

will have a closer look at the attempts on how to quantify the value for the customer

monetarily and how the assessment of CVPs has evolved over time. It is therefore viewing a

case study from a practitioner’s perspective. CVPs are an important and widespread tool

amongst startup companies, which is used for finding and pivoting to a suitable, scalable

business model, and for successfully entering the target market. The main objective of

crafting a CVP is to work on a solution, which strictly keeps the customer’s situation,

environment and needs in the center of attention and decision making. Quantifying CVPs has

proven to be useful for enhancing sales, especially in business markets, and for steering

company strategy in early development stages. The main purpose of this case study is to find

out how startups actually craft CVPs and quantify them monetarily. Therefore, a single case

study of six months was performed on practical work experience inside a startup company of

nearly two years. Key findings are that customer interaction is key to any startup evolution,

and strategy needs to be reviewed when customer contact is too low. A further finding is that

endurance and creativity will help new technology-based startup companies to get the

numbers they need to quantify the monetary worth of their CVP. Asking how much a certain

CVP element is helping the customer is most important, and if the quantity is not in monetary

terms, it can be converted into it. This article intends to encourage further research on

monetary quantification of CVPs, especially in the context of newly founded startup ventures,

and to spur debate with practitioners and scholars alike.