| dc.description.abstract | The customers are the base of every business. They are influencing the business, but business can also influence them. Business and customer are terms closely linked together. Only the proper understanding of customer can result in business success. Designing a business model is a challenging task for every company. As Drucker (1994) describes, the business model is based on market assumptions. The wrong assumptions lead to business failure. Panikker (2015) extended this idea by focusing on effect of inequalities between the product’s value proposition and value perception of customers. Here raises the question: What is the role of the customer’s perception in designing the successful sustainable business model?
This topic was formed during the time when our case company – Mørenot Robotics got into organisational changes and change in strategy. Mørenot Robotics left the Mørenot group and became Troll Systems AS. Our initial focus on customer perception on lifecycle costing of Mørenot Robotics’ innovation called NetRobot X2 was considered and subsequently modified into focus on business model optimization based on customers’ insights.
The theoretical framework of the thesis was inspired among others by Panikker’s reflection (2015) on inequalities between value proposition and value perception of innovation. Value proposition as part of a company’s business model was studied according to Osterwalder & Pigneur theory (2010). On the other side, Stinnett’s work (2004) was applied as the base for customers’ insight analysis. The secondary documentation was used to understand the background of aquaculture industry and product features.
We decide to build this study on one case company because of time constraint, COVID-19 limitation, and complexity of topic. Based on theoretical findings and methodological recommendations, we decided to apply the semi-structured interview with purpose to obtain a description of company in form of storytelling. Entrepreneur of company as single interviewee used double sided description of his company and customers’ perception. He used a critical thinking when describing the company and product development on one side. On the other side, he proposed his experience with customers and their feedback.
Based on interview information and published articles, a business model analysis was executed with SWOT evaluation. It revealed that company's assumptions were being made based on customers as firms with macroeconomic view excluding microeconomic focus on end-user. In combination with other factors, company was not able to show results to result-driven customers. That was a moment when entrepreneur decided to apply the organisation and strategy changes. Using the arguments of the entrepreneur and theoretical insight, we identified that company is using the business model pattern of direct selling. With regards to factors explored in business analysis, we recommend using the patterns of add-ons, customer loyalty and razor-and-blade as suggestions to combine them with current direct-selling pattern. This could reduce the negative factors and it could optimise the business model of company resulting in potential of higher revenues. | |