The Business Model of Sports Academies with an Emphasis on Value Proposition and Customer Segments

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.