Week 7- Gato Cafe and the Value Proposition Canvas

Week 7

Gato Cafe

     This week we talked about the Shark Tank episode on Gato Cafe. Gato Cafe is a business that wants to open store that serves coffee and prepackaged foods and also has cats around the store. The idea is that people enjoy cats and they would be able to relax and reduce stress by coming to this cafe with cats in it. They did not get a deal with any of the sharks and they do not own a store yet. I think this could be a good idea but I think it would struggle to have a large enough market. As we have learned in many chapters, it is essential to have a large target market and know that market. I do not think there would be enough people that would go out of their way to pay extra money for this Gato Cafe rather than just buying their coffee elsewhere. I think families with children would be their many target market. Kids would love to come to this cafe and their parents could bring them occasionally instead of buying a cat for their house. An example of a Gato Cafe can be found above.

Value Proposition Canvas

     We also discussed what is called the value proposition canvas, in class this week. The value proposition canvas helps evaluate a product and see what it has to offer. It is meant to help us understand the gap found between product and customer and also between customer and your substitutes, or competitors. The value proposition canvas can be seen on the left. It helps to lay out the benefits, features, and experience of the product. It also shows us what the customer would want, fear, and need from this product. Lastly, it helps us to see who are competitors are, or substitutes.

 

Value Proposition Canvas for Gato Cafe

     In class we also completed a value proposition canvas for Gato Cafe. It goes as follows:

Product

Benefits: Stress relief, solves issue of hunger or thirst, social gathering
Features: Food, drinks, cats
Experience: Relaxing with cats enjoying a drink or snack

Costumer

Wants: Relaxation, place to bring children who want a cat, stress relief, the experience, food or drink
Needs: Possibly emotion help or therapy
Fears: Allergies, sanitation, aggression in cats

Substitutes

Zoos, coffee shops, pet shops, relaxing places such as spas or resorts.

Conclusion

     From this we can gather a lot about Gato Cafe. We understand that there may be fears from customers that we need to address in order to limit these fears. We also would need to make ourselves stand out from any competition such as pet stores or other coffee shops. It can also help us to focus on our benefits and features and make sure we do the most we can with those benefits to create the best product.

Smart Project

     We can also use the value proposition canvas to help us with our Smart Projects. This would be very helpful for us to visualize our benefits and features. It would also allow us to think as the customer and think of what fears they may have and want they would want or need from this product. We could also better understand our competitors and how to stand out from them and make our product our own.