Value creation mechanisms of business models

Management scholars and practitioners generally agree that the primary functions of a business model are value creation and value capture. However, the meaning (conceptualization) of these terms, their measurement, and the factors and mechanisms affecting them remain contentious. In the current article, we provide answers to these questions by clarifying the consumers’ value creation and business value capture constructs. Then, we demonstrate how they are determined by four business model mechanisms: value proposition and value targeting (affecting consumers’ value through willingness to pay) and value appropriation and value delivery (affecting business value through price and cost). We demonstrate that a fine-grained analysis of a business model’s value creation cannot be adequately performed without reference to these four mechanisms. The developed conceptual framework is illustrated and corroborated by the mini-case vignettes. We finish by outlining an application of the proposed framework to two crucial real-world business model situations: escaping the Giver Trap and remaining the Winner.