The challenge of early sales planning in green startups : how to sell and to whom?

Abstract

Our world requires more than ever green entrepreneurs, willing to develop sustainable solutions to solve the ecological problems caused by our modern way of living. This work focuses on the major challenge of Green Startups: finding costumers and generating sales.This thesis presents a clear definition for Green Startups, statistical data, as well as trends,opportunities and challenges, as well as a simplified methodology based on the Eco-Canvas for a circular economy, to analyze the value proposition of Green Startups to identify costumers, implement communication and sales channels that enables to capture value.This work presents:(1) An empirical study of Green Startups in Austria and a survey of the communication and sales channels of preference in Europe taking into account six different sectors wereGreen Startups operate: Green Energy, Organic Textiles, Organic Food, Raw Materials, Green Mobility, Natural Cosmetics and Household Products.(2) An analysis that leads to the formulation of useful recommendations for coming green startups when developing a strategy to attract consumers and generate sales.The study shows that the simplified method based on three steps from the Eco-canvas can be useful to analyze the social and environmental impact of the business to maximize its value proposition, locate the suitable customer segment through communication and sales channels that generate sales.It has been found that successful entrepreneurs are supported by a network in order to generate the first sales, most of them makes use of the internet to create awareness of their products and services, as well as to close sales and that are strongly supported by the word of mouth.the customers for each sector has different channel preferences. There is a dominance of the internet as the first option for searching for products and services, with exception of the organic food, natural and household products, were the public prefers to visit local shops over all the options assessed in this work.