People produce waste as a side product to their daily life. The overall increase in standard of living has also raised the average amount of waste produced per capita. Since the amount of waste produced is building up on a rapid phase the waste is becoming a serious problem for humankind. Existing waste can also be considered as wasted resources, since the waste is usually stockpiled on landfills and is then left without purpose and only pro-ducing environmental and health hazards for the surrounding regions. However, the waste contains valuable materials which, when recycled and reused, could help to reduce the need for, for example, mining new minerals. Since the resources in earth are increasingly scarce, it is important to look for ways to reduce the amount of waste disposed and to take advantage of the valuable resources contained in waste.
The European Union has defined a waste hierarchy to regulate its member countries’
waste related actions and thus to better protect environment (Waste Framework Directive 2008). In this waste hierarchy the highest priority is on reducing the overall amount of waste produced, then preparing the waste for reuse, recycling the waste, then using the waste to other purposes, mainly on producing energy, and last is the final disposal when no other mean of use or recovery is applicable. The preparing for reuse and recycling both advance circular economy, where valuable raw materials return to the supply chain and are reused rather than disposed. The use of waste in energy production means mainly the incineration where the thermal energy of the waste is captured to produce, for example, electricity. This is the last level in the hierarchy before final disposal, meaning that only the fractions of the waste that cannot be reused or recycled should go through this phase and what cannot be utilized here will end up in disposal.
The purpose of this thesis is to support market entry in emerging markets in case of waste utilization in Sultanate of Oman. This means that the current waste management of Oman is analyzed and possible development areas are identified. Then, a business model for waste management equipment and solutions provider is created in a way that the achieve-ments in this thesis also function as a template for future business model creations for the same equipment and solutions provider. The research question is: how to take into ac-count the customers’ decision-making process in business model generation. This re-search question handles the different factors in customers’ decision-making regarding the potential investments and how to take them into account and utilize them in creating the future business model for the selected market. The thesis has also an operative goal set for it. This operative goal is formed into a question: what are the proposed technology concepts and investment opportunities for treating waste in Oman. The solution of this operative goal takes into account the properties, amount and quality of the collected waste
in different locations. The other aspect of this operative goal is the demand for different achieved outputs of different treating concepts. This is also affected by the general will-ingness to protect environment and thus to apply reasoning similar to waste hierarchy defined by EU. As an answer to the operative goal it is attempted to find optimal invest-ment properties and options by taking into account the waste variables and parameters but also the different values of various stakeholders.
Regarding the subject of the thesis, the research question, and research scope of this text, the aim of this thesis is to provide answers to current questions of a supplier company by utilizing current known theoretical frameworks. Thus, the thesis does not aim to directly contribute to the literature by testing new hypotheses and deriving new theory from em-pirical research. Instead, from the theoretical perspective the thesis rather aims to testing existing theories and frameworks suggested by previous literature. The testing of these frameworks and theories then contributes to the literature by generating an application case of the utilized frameworks.
In this text the research question is solved by providing a template method by utilizing customer value identification and a customer decision-making simulation based on the value identification. In order to identify some of the customer value components that are location specific, a geographic collection solution needs to be created first. This geo-graphic collection solution also sets some contours for the relevant technology alterna-tives per location. Thus, this phase influences also the solution to the operative goal.
Based on the geographical collection solution, customer value identification and customer decision-making simulation, a list of technology concepts in order of favorability per ge-ographical collection location is achieved. This outcome provides answers for the opera-tive goal and gives also important insight for generating a business model by using the Business Model Canvas. The use of the phases of customer value identification, customer decision-making simulation, and use of Business Model Canvas is utilized to answer the research question and as a whole together with the documented template nature of the thesis, provide important support for market entry in emerging markets also in future by providing a clear process consisting of said methods and actual tools introduced in the text. This process is also illustrated in Figure 1 below.
Geographical
Figure 1. Simplified flowchart of the thesis process
The text is structured as follows. In second chapter, background for the thesis and current waste management situation in Oman is described. In third chapter, the relevant literature
is reviewed to form a theoretical framework for the thesis. The fourth chapter introduces some processing technology alternatives for municipal solid waste. Fifth chapter presents the geographical collection solution that is later used in this thesis as a starting point for financial calculations, customer value identification, and customers’ decision-making simulation. The sixth chapter analyzes the customers’ decision-making and provides a simulated proposal of the selected technology alternatives in order of favorability for the customer. In seventh chapter the generation of the Business Model Canvas according to the previous proposal simulation is discussed. The eight chapter discusses the template nature of this thesis to function as a template for the future business model generation cases in the same supplier company. Lastly, in the ninth chapter, conclusions about the thesis are presented and discussed.