Customer development for co-living services

: the case of Sweet Tides

Abstract

The dissertation at hand analyzes the Portuguese co-living market and tests the initial product market fit of Sweet Tides. Sweet Tides is a new co-living concept that combines remote work with a sustainable leisure approach. The first research question aims at understanding the structures of the Portuguese co-living market and its players. A secondary data analysis shows that the market development of co living spaces is maturing, and along some bigger chains that are present in Portugal, new private players are entering the market due to the ever-growing population of digital workers. The second question aims at defining early adopters for Sweet Tides through secondary data analysis and validating the assumptions by conducting online controlled experiments. Findings showed that targeting Digital Nomads is a reasonable approach for building an initial target group. Their interest in the business concept was validated by testing different Minimum Viable Products. Firstly, advertisements were published on social media and Google with the goal of persuading prospective customers to interact. Secondly, these prospects were forwarded to a landing page describing Sweet Tides concept. The experiment's data analysis shows that the results of the advertisements and landing page conversions exceed the overall industry average and therefore support an initial product-market fit. The third research question examines the use of the different channels mentioned and the messaging used. The results support the assumption of social media channels and Google as effective customer acquisition channels in the future and the use of leisure-focused communication.

Date of Award	4 Jul 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Rute Xavier (Supervisor)