Development of a business model for a B2B online media portal in Germany

Abstract

The aim of this thesis was to validate the business idea of a startup: a B2B online media portal in Germany reporting on current and relevant news from the nonfood industry. For this purpose, a lean canvas business model, hypotheses and three research questions with the deepening into the areas of market, customer and revenue were developed to cover all components of a business model evaluation. For the elaboration, a qualitative research of eight semi-structured expert interviews and a comprehensive literature research were conducted. The results revealed that the existing market for online media portals in the nonfood industry is fragmented and unsaturated, and thus there is a need for the startup idea. Key attributes to further differentiate from competitors are free content, industry-focused reporting, regularity of new information (1-2 weekly), a modern user interface and a community section on the portal. The startup's main target group should be decision-makers in the retail sector, as they have agreat need for the portal and also represent the most lucrative readership. These decision-makersare predominantly male, on average 48 years old and work mainly in the buying department of small and medium-sized companies. Paying customers of the portal are B2B stakeholders who want to present themselves to retailers through paid advertising on the startup'sportal/newsletter. In addition, based on competitive pricing, user scaling, and a cost breakdown, an income statement was created indicating that the startup can be profitable with advertising revenue starting in the third year.

Date of Award	24 Jan 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Rute Xavier (Supervisor)