Monetary Quantification of the Customer Value Proposition in the IT Startup Company Aberklar GbR

  • Typ:Master's thesis
  • Betreuer:

    Markus Kirchberger

  • Zusatzfeld:

    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.