MS70091E New Venture Development

This is why understanding and creating a coherent business model around a business plan/idea is extremely important. In the final part of the module, a great attention will be payed to this crucial aspect that allows the progression from a structured idea to a successful functioning business. The module aims to:

• Highlighting a range of pertinent issues to the understanding and analysis of entrepreneurship and the small business sector.
• Understanding the importance of creativity and innovation within the small business sector.
• Developing the ability of creating and presenting business ideas in the form of a business plan.
• Mastering the process of translating successful business ideas into feasible business plans and models
• Developing a set of practical skills necessary to operate effectively as an entrepreneur

Upon completion of the module, students will be able to:

1. Critically evaluate key issues related to the identification process of entrepreneurial opportunities.
2. Demonstrate evidences of understanding of the role of creativity in the process of creating and developing business ideas.


Show evidences of understanding of the main elements of a business model and its coherency.
Construct coherent business models around a specific business idea.
Create and evaluate appealing and feasible business plans.

What groups of customers are you providing value for?

• What are your customers’ characteristics and personas?
• How would you describe your different customer groups?

What problems do your customers have and how are you solving them?

• How does your product or service meet the needs of your customers?
• What value do you deliver to your customer segments?
• How will communicate with your customers (face-to-face or remotely)?
• How will you manage customer acquisition, convincing your customers to select your products or services over that of others available?
• Can you retain customers and how will you do this?
• Can you offer added value and upsell to your customers?

Answer:

Customer Segments

“Wellness” will be a full service health club that will be situated in Aggona in Sri Lanka and will offers health and fitness services to customers under unique natural and open environment with traditional health practices like yoga, meditation, exercises etc. The heath club will also offer ayurvedic and natural treatment and therapies to customers depending on their body needs and types which will help them heal their body, mind and relax their soul bringing in freshness, rejuvenation and well being.  The health club “Wellness” will sell their health and fitness services to two kinds of target customers.

The first group of consumers will be professionals both males and females in age group of 20-45 years who have high income but less time to spend on fitness activities. They have a need to remain fit/exercise or be healthy mainly to balance the work stress and lifestyle changes and also these group of customers being working in corporate sectors have need to appear good and healthy.  These groups of consumers are not price sensitive though are highly demanding on quality service, comfort and relaxation (Ladd 2018).

The other groups of consumers will be people with injuries or needs to recover from some illness and are advised to go to health clubs by their doctors to maintain their well being needs of body and mind. These people can be of any age group and can be working professionals, home makers, students and retired people etc who have a need to maintain fitness either to stay healthy or are recommended to regularly work out by their general physicians. The age group is between 18 years + who are people willing to get membership in health clubs to maintain a balanced active and regular life. Among these group of consumers students and retired people are price sensitive due to low disposable income for spending into fitness centers and expect health services that can be tailored to their needs and negotiated as per their price affordability.  Among this group of consumers also come special needs people who have to recover from some illness or injury condition and for them special packages will be provided in consultation with their physicians that suits their body and medical needs. These special packages will also include counseling services for better healing of their mental well being and emotional needs to overcome trauma from sickness or injuries and lead a normal life.     

Value Proposition

Wellness will be aimed to create value for customers through their health and fitness service offering which will serve both environment and society to add value proposition along with meeting well being needs for their customers. Each of their customers irrespective of packages or membership kinds will be treated equal and will be offered personal attention from trained and qualified fitness trainers to meet their specific health and body needs (Maassen 2018).  Each customer will be evaluated after getting membership at “Wellness” health club to evaluate their state of mind, body condition and then packages will be suggested by fitness professionals of “Wellness” health club to suit their individual needs and offer unique value to each customer irrespective of prices.

Also to add value focus “Wellness” health club will be offering quality health services under a comfortable environment i.e. open and natural environment where customers will feel the natural air and freshness of nature which will relax their body, bring their soul to peace and calm their mind.   Also some additional services like cold and fragrance showers will be offered that can be availed by customers on request and extra payment in addition to their general packages that can be enjoyed after exercising.

Further for price sensitive group of consumers like students, retired people special discount offers will be provided by “Wellness” health club to make health and fitness services more accessible and affordable that will add value and enhance brand performance in market.  

At “Wellness” health club there will be two kinds of membership, the first one will be executive membership and other will be day workout membership. In executive membership program “Wellness” health club will mainly aim to add value to corporate executives who will get to access the club any time of the day for their work out and fitness regime as suitable to their choices as they have usually busy schedules in day time and during morning. Those groups of corporate customers who prefer to access club after their work schedules can visit “Wellness” club at end of day in evening hours and all these customers will be given choices to personalize their packages and choices of activities from yoga, meditation, exercise, stretch activities etc that will energize their work out routines (Fielt 2013).  However in day work out membership prices will be charged less as these will be mostly during middle of days and will be suitable for students, retired people and home makers who can access health club after finishing their daily regimes. Prices of day work out memberships will be competitive based with aim to save money for these groups of customers as well as give them quality access to health services.  

Customers of “Wellness” health club will be given opportunities to access the club at their convenience of time which will be kept flexible to their daily routines. A website service will be provided where members can check out the membership packages, their features, timings and rates as well as can post their queries at anytime they want whether from home or office or outside over their smartphones or laptops and these queries will either be responded on call at choice of their timing or over mail within 6 hours of posting inquiries by fitness professionals or customer agents who will attend and resolve customer needs of health service packages faster for greater conveniences. This website facility will also be useful for those people who have bus schedules and cannot visit the health clubs during opening hours for checking out the packages or talking with professionals for better guidance’s. For all types of customers both executive and day membership an introductory offer will be offered by “Wellness” to add value to early customers where a free of cost health consultation for 4 times in first year of membership will be provided as complementary service to add value proposition.        

In addition to all customer focused value added services, “Wellness” health club will also add value to environment and society where all their products that will be used for therapies will be plant based and free from cruelty as well as mostly based on natural ayurvedic treatment products. These will help to add value to environment. While to add value to society in large “Wellness” health club will aim to hire local women from poor background or income group to support their standards of living and will give them training to equip them with services in health club in different jobs based on their eligibility (Bertels, Koen and Elsum 2015). This will help to add value to society as in Sri Lanka there is a considerable section of population that are away from mainstream employment and have poor standards of living due to lack of opportunities.  “Wellness” health club aims to lead a movement where healthy lifestyle and fitness habits will be promoted by offering customers their health needs to make fitness goals easier and accessible for them.       
Channels

The services of “Wellness” health club will be made reachable to customers by use of combination of various traditional and modern medium of communication and media tools for effective promotion and distribution of services that will create larger awareness of their services and brands identity. Example of channels that will be used by “Wellness” health club to communicate, sell and offer services to customers will include website platforms i.e. Wellness health clubs corporate website that will feature all information on product, packages, services and features. Other than these mobile apps will be used for communication where digital content on service of Wellness health clubs will be distributed through phones for different customer groups. Moreover social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc will be used to distribute information on services of Wellness club and generate awareness amongst customers for its various packages and unique features.  These social pages will have link to website of Wellness club where customers will be able to browse detailed information and even enroll in membership using a secured payment gateway (García-Gutiérrez and Martínez-Borreguero 2016). Other than modern channels other conventional channels like advertisement in print media, magazines, TV commercials and billboards will be used to access to mass consumers and increase awareness for services of “Wellness” health club to more number of people to turn them into potential members. To help customers make better decisions various reviews from social media bloggers, fitness enthusiasts and professional trainers will be published on website of Wellness club so that customers can read reviews, comments, shared opinions of others on products or services of Wellness club and then can make decisions for membership. These reviews on social media and blogs on websites will help to promote brand of Wellness.  Further to generate more traffic advertisement services of Google ads and media channels like Facebook will be used to generate mass awareness and distribution of product information through cost effective channels.    

Customer Relationships

Wellness health club will interact with their customers to manage customer acquisition and will convince them for final purchase of membership programs by using various means to build customer relationships like special discounts and promotional offers will be provided to attract customers and early birds who will be offered low priced membership rates exclusively for customer acquisition. Also loyalty programs will be offered for existing customers who will avail annual membership with onetime payment where they will be given cold shower or fragrance spa services as complementary loyalty schemes services. For other customers there will be loyalty schemes like rebates after they pay over a certain amount of membership fees and for students, retired people there will be competitive prices products. For women and home makers special safe guarantee schemes will be offered along with convenience of time to make more women customers avail the services of Wellness health club (Lüttgens and Diener 2016).  Other than these promotional events or offers will be mailed to customers as well as list of potential customers to attract and acquire them. Further membership promo offers will be provided in fitness magazines and blog advertisements where customers will be given special deal of packages. However word of mouth, sharing of review on social media will be other form of value added communication with customers that will build relationships and brand promotion of Wellness club from existing and satisfied group of consumers who would recommend services to friends and relatives after being happy with products.        

Key Resources

Physical: health centre space or property

Human: professional fitness trainers, support partners, Web and application developers, marketing and operations employees

Intellectual: trademarks and copyrights

Financial: capital

Revenue Stream

The main revenue stream will be retail sales directly from websites or stores. Also Wellness club will work with media channels as well as with active sports brands that will sponsor Wellness services and these would generate source of revenue. Further pop up ads on blog sites of Wellness where either on sidebar or top there may appear banner of active sport wear or fitness equipment advertisement will help to add revenues.   

Key Activities

The key attributes in business canvas are: (Golnam, Moser, Gopal and Wegmann 2014)

Marketing/promotion: Wellness will ensure to reach the brand awareness to more customers and make it more accessible and popular to public.

Product development: Wellness will ensure that packages are constantly updated with better features or prices to help meet needs of customers as per their change in expectations.

Manage website and distribution: Wellness will ensure that information is updated on website to give customers better details on packages and services and will respond to queries on priorities to add conveniences. Also services will be offered both through website or stores to make it highly accessible and flexible.   

Key Partners

• Manufacturers for active wear
• Advertisement companies who will provide online web advertisements on various websites and social media through media companies, promotions through referrals
• Web hosting companies will offer a platform to host Wellness store online and allow customers to interact. Further there are plans of introducing a mobile app for easier navigation for people with smartphones.

Cost Structure

• Fixed cost: product and packaging development, infrastructure (website), accounting system
• Variable cost: Materials, distribution, marketing, operations
• Marketing and sales
• Product development
• General and administrative

References

Bertels, H. M., Koen, P. A., and Elsum, I. (2015). Business models outside the core: Lessons learned from success and failure. Research Technology Management, [Online] 58(2), 20-29. Available: https://search.proquest.com/docview/1683082720?accountid=30552 [Accessed on 2 Nov. 2018]

Fielt, E. (2013). Conceptualising business models: Definitions, frameworks and classifications. Journal of Business Models, [Online] 1(1), 85-105. Available: https://search.proquest.com/docview/1910803366?accountid=30552 [Accessed on 2 Nov. 2018]

García-Gutiérrez, I., and Martínez-Borreguero, F. J. (2016). The innovation pivot framework: Fostering business model innovation in start-ups. Research Technology Management, [Online] 59(5), 48-56. Available: doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08956308.2016.1208043 [Accessed on 2 Nov. 2018]

Golnam, A., Moser, C. I., Gopal, A., and Wegmann, A. (2014). Value map: An innovative tool for business model innovation. ISPIM Conference Proceedings. Manchester: 1-20. (ISIPM) [Online]Available:  https://search.proquest.com/docview/1690365017?accountid=30552 [Accessed on 2 Nov. 2018]

Ladd, T. (2018). Does the business model canvas drive venture success? Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, [Online] 20(1), 57-69. Available: doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JRME-11-2016-0046 [Accessed on 2 Nov. 2018]

Lüttgens, D., and Diener, K. (2016). Business model patterns used as a tool for creating (new) innovative business models. Journal of Business Models, [Online] 4(3), 19-36. Available:  https://search.proquest.com/docview/1908295374?accountid=30552 [Accessed on 2 Nov. 2018]

Maassen, M. A. (2018). Sustainable business models: An imperative in the strategic management of companies and organizations. Management Dynamics in the Knowledge Economy, [Online] 6(2), 323-335. Available: doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.25019/MDKE/6.2.09 [Accessed on 2 Nov. 2018]