Abstract:
Background. Nowadays, sport is considered as a good base for marketing and entrepreneurship. Business model design is also increasingly welcomed. But in the field of sports businesses and sports academies in Iran, no research has been conducted, and no specific business model has been introduced.
Objectives. The purpose of this study is to identify and prioritize the value proposition components and customer segments as influential components of the business model.
Methods. This research is applied in terms of purpose and adopted the descriptive-survey approach for data collection. Lastly, it employed mixed exploratory research methodology (i.e., quantitative-qualitative). The statistical population consists of entrepreneurs, sports business owners, managers of athletic academies, heads of athletic departments and managers of national Olympic academies. In the qualitative section, 15 individuals were selected using the purposeful snowball sampling strategy until the theoretical saturation level was achieved. The analysis of the data was done by analyzing the quality of the content while using open coding, axis coding and theme coding methods. Next, in the quantitative section, the AHP method was used to prioritize the different categories of value proposition and customer segments.
Results. The results of data shows that the customer segments, in order of importance include athletes (beginners to champions) (0.557), coaches and referees (0.333) and the ordinary people (public) (0.110).
Conclusion. It is recommended that the business owners studied as well as those interested in setting up such businesses while carefully analyzing their customers and their characteristics and accurately segmenting them, provide services tailored to the value of each customer.
Machine summary:
The main question of the research is: ‘what are the components of the value proposed to customers and target customers to launch or develop a sports academy business?’ MATERIALS AND METHODS Study Design.
The content analysis method was used to identify the categories, components, and design of the business model of the sports academies based on the two blocks of proposed value and the customer segment.
Then, the elements and categories of value proposition and customer segments of the business model of sports academies were extracted and the model derived from the qualitative research section was introduced with two main components and ten categories.
The findings of the qualitative section include the presentation of 54 open codes in the form of ten categories and two content components and based on these two main components and ten categories, the value proposition and customer segment were designed in the business model of sports academies (Figure 1).
The results of the quantitative section were utilized to determine the priority of the value proposition categories and the customer segment in the business model of sports academies.
Based on the findings of qualitative interview analysis in this study, finally, nine main components and 45 systematic categories were proposed for the business model of sports academies, nine parts of value proposition, customer segment, income stream, activity.
It is suggested that the design of a customer value proposition model in the business of sports academies be preferred to a case study.