Upload
others
View
5
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
i
Master thesis Management Studies
Student: Ruben Versloot Date: 20-10-2017
ii
A business model for digital content providers
The case of Nature Today
Student: Ruben Versloot
Registration number: 900730883130
Thesis Management Studies - MST-80433
Supervisors: Kim Poldner & Arnold van Vliet
Institute: Wageningen University
Place: Wageningen
Date: 20-10-2017
iii
Abstract Digital content providers are still very dependent on advertisement incomes, while these incomes are
under pressure by the increasing usage of online advertisement blockers. This research aims to identify
the business model components that need improvement for digital content providers to be financially
self-sustainable. This is done through a case study analysis of Nature Today, a platform for nature news
from research institutes, nature organizations and NGO’s. A literature review on business models,
business model innovation, digital platforms and marketing of digital content was performed in order
to create a survey for the visitors of the Nature Today platform. Together with a competitor analysis
the conclusions were drawn that the platform could improve by expanding news articles, creating
more partnerships with nature organizations, connecting nature lovers to nature activities, adding
customizations options to the platform and improve social media strategy. These recommendations
lead to new revenue streams for the platform and justify the publishing fee asked to content partners.
From these outcomes was concluded that digital content providers should have a thorough
understanding of customers wants and needs, and should create a network of partners in the same
sector to be successful.
Keywords: Business models, business model innovation, digital content, digital content marketing,
Nature Today
iv
Executive summary Digital content providers have searched for new monetizing methods and business models to be
future-proof. Whereas they are mainly dependent on advertisement incomes, the growing use of
advertisement blockers shows that incomes from this source will only decline in the future. The
objective of this research was to provide digital content providers with a business model that can
create financially self-sustainable businesses. First, literature has been reviewed about the topics
of business models, business model innovation, digital platforms and marketing of digital
content. From this overview was decided to use the Business Model Canvas as a unit of analysis
for a case study. The case used for this research was Nature Today, an online platform where
nature news from research institutes, nature organizations and NGO’s is published. The platform
is mainly dependent on advertisement income and their affiliate web shop, but these do not
cover all costs. By using this case as a study of analysis, general conclusions are drawn that could
be applied by other digital content providers. From literature was concluded that information on
the value proposition, extensive customer knowledge, key resources and competencies, key
partners, competitors, revenue streams and personal factors are important for building a
successful business model. A survey was designed to gain insights on these parameters and
spread through the website of Nature Today, which resulted in a response of 1869 persons.
The results gave a clear overview of the demographic characteristics and the wishes and needs
of the visitors. This led to the conclusion that customer data is essential for successful business
models. The average age of the visitors is rather old with 59 years, they are highly educated,
mostly men, want to be informed – and learn new things – about nature and are interested or
already involved in nature monitoring, nature management and nature preservations activities.
This research suggests to develop the top-down platform as it is now, into a more social platform
– also indicated in this research as a nature economic ecosystem. This ecosystem will create
possibilities for new revenue streams, leading to more financial stability. Considering the nature
news articles, the focus should be on daily publishing new articles, of high quality and with a
preference for the topics of birds, butterflies, mammals or plants. Internalization of news articles
has potential and asks for international nature content partners, in the first place for topics that
can be related back to Dutch nature. Most importantly, the existing Dutch articles should stay,
meaning the platform will have to expand when focusing on international nature news. For new
activities the potential is high for organizing excursions, lectures, courses or webinars. These can
either be organized by Nature Today themselves or they could be the connector between natu re
lovers and nature organizations.
For financial reasons, the potential of the web shop is high and this could be exploited by
establishing new partnerships with retailers of nature products. Also, the visitors have shown to
be committed to the website and a donation button could help to increase revenues. Or to let
visitors pay a small fee to get access to webinars or activities of content partners. For customer
satisfaction it is recommended to track their wishes and needs every once in a while, for example
with an annual feedback survey. The trend of customization should also be implemented by
Nature Today by adding the possibility to personalize the website to their own preferences. This
could be done by adding an option that allows readers to only see news articles about certain
topics or species or from certain nature organizations. Finally, this research has elaborated on
the mutual benefit of the collaboration between Nature Today and their content partners.
Content partners can profit from possible employers and volunteers on the website, the possibility to
gather new members, to gather people for their nature activities and to learn more about the interests
in nature topics to write about. This justifies asking a fee to publish on the Nature Today platform.
v
Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... iii
Executive summary ................................................................................................................................ iv
1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Case Introduction: Nature Today ............................................................................................ 2
1.2 Aim of research ....................................................................................................................... 3
1.3 Research questions.................................................................................................................. 3
2 Literature review ............................................................................................................................. 5
2.1 Business models for digital content providers ........................................................................ 5
2.1.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 5
2.1.2 Business Model Canvas of Nature Today ........................................................................ 6
2.1.3 Different types of business models ................................................................................. 6
2.1.4 Tools for digital content providers .................................................................................. 7
2.1.5 Value capture innovation ................................................................................................ 9
2.2 Digital platforms .................................................................................................................... 10
2.2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 10
2.2.2 Survival of digital platforms ........................................................................................... 10
2.2.3 Designing a digital platform .......................................................................................... 11
2.2.4 Internal vs. external platforms ...................................................................................... 12
2.3 Marketing digital content ...................................................................................................... 12
2.3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 12
2.3.2 Digital content characteristics ....................................................................................... 13
2.3.3 Opportunities for digital marketing ............................................................................... 14
2.3.4 Economic ecosystem ..................................................................................................... 14
2.4 Revenue methods .................................................................................................................. 15
2.4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 15
2.4.2 Monetizing methods ..................................................................................................... 15
2.5 Conceptual framework ......................................................................................................... 16
2.6 Analysis of successful digital content providers .................................................................... 18
3 Methodology ................................................................................................................................. 20
3.1 Case study .............................................................................................................................. 20
3.2 Data collection ....................................................................................................................... 20
3.2.1 Literature review ........................................................................................................... 20
vi
3.2.2 Interviews ...................................................................................................................... 21
3.2.3 Survey ............................................................................................................................ 21
3.3 Data analysis .......................................................................................................................... 22
3.3.1 Market - and competitor analysis ................................................................................. 23
3.4 Research framework ............................................................................................................. 24
4 Results and Analysis ...................................................................................................................... 25
4.1 Business Model Canvas of Nature Today .............................................................................. 25
4.1.1 Value proposition .......................................................................................................... 26
4.1.2 Key activities .................................................................................................................. 28
4.1.3 Key resources ................................................................................................................ 31
4.1.4 Customer relationship ................................................................................................... 33
4.1.5 Channels ........................................................................................................................ 34
4.1.6 Customer segments ....................................................................................................... 36
4.1.7 Key partners .................................................................................................................. 38
4.1.8 Cost structure ................................................................................................................ 40
4.1.9 Revenue streams ........................................................................................................... 41
4.2 Analysis of Nature Today’s competitive environment from survey data .............................. 44
4.3 Benefits for Nature Today’s content partners ...................................................................... 47
5 Conclusion and recommendations ................................................................................................ 50
5.1 Recommendations for Nature Today .................................................................................... 51
6 Discussion ...................................................................................................................................... 53
Limitations ......................................................................................................................................... 55
Recommendations for further research ............................................................................................ 55
References ............................................................................................................................................. 56
Appendix 1 – Survey questions ............................................................................................................. 59
Appendix 2 – AtlasTI .............................................................................................................................. 70
Appendix 3 – Survey results .................................................................................................................. 73
1
1 Introduction Many digital content providers are still depending on the revenues from advertisements (Lacy 2009).
Digital content providers offer online information goods. A characteristic of an information good is that
it is expensive to produce or create, but easy and inexpensive to copy (Shapiro and Varian 1999). To
get compensation for their time and efforts to create content, many websites and online platforms
have built-in advertisements. On the other hand the latest year report by PageFair about the state of
the blocked web shows that the income from advertisements is under pressure. This is due to the use
of advertisement blockers (or adblockers). The use of adblockers for desktops and mobile devices is
growing explosively in Asia and it is the expectation that North America and Europe will follow. Global
growth in blocking advertisements led to 11% of people worldwide already using adblockers, which is
a growth of over 30% between December 2015 and December 2016 (PageFair 2017). Figure 1 shows
the history in the use of adblockers on desktops and mobile devices between 2009 and 2016.
Figure 1: Devices using AdBlock software on the open web (PageFair 2017)
These rising numbers are putting pressure on digital content providers who are dependent on the
income from visitors who see and click on advertisements. However, prospects show that adblocker
use will only increase and subsequently digital content providers will lose revenue. Research by the
Business Insider for American content providers predicts that this rise will have an enormous negative
effect on income. Whereas in 2016 the ad revenue loss was 3.9 billion, this is expected to rise to 12.1
billion by 2020 (Business Insider 2016). The main reasons for installing adblockers come from
interruptive advertisement formats and people’s concerns for getting viruses or malware on their
devices. Other motivations are slower websites and longer loading times, an excessive amount of
advertisements on websites and for privacy and tracking issues (PageFair 2017).
In this research the case of Nature Today will be used because they have to deal with the described
income problem. By identifying new possible revenue streams and options for business model
innovation for Nature Today this research will look at general business model possibilities for digital
content providers. This research will use a naturalistic generalization approach (Stake 1978), which
means that this case study will determine whether the outcomes for this specific case are also
applicable for other cases (Gomm et al. 2000). The following section will provide background
information on Nature Today and their business network.
2
1.1 Case Introduction: Nature Today Nature today is an organization that offers a platform where researchers from over 15 nature
organizations and knowledge institutes publish stories on topical developments in nature. Nature
Today is a content-based website and platform to inform the public about the latest insights from
nature related researches. The vision of Nature Today is to “continuously and actively inform the public
and specific target groups on topical developments in nature people, so they will become more
connected with nature, they will get more knowledge on nature, they will better appreciate nature and
they will be more motivated to contribute to monitoring, management and preservation of nature”
(website Nature Today 2016). Nature Today is not a standalone platform but interacts with, and is
created by, multiple actors in the field of nature. Figure 2 provides an overview of the business
environment Nature Today operates in:
Figure 2: The business environment of Nature Today
Figure 2 shows the business environment where Nature Today operates in. At the bottom of the
environment are the researchers as they form the basis of the platform when they publish stories on
topical developments in nature. These researchers consist of academic researchers, experts working
at NGO’s and other nature organizations. Their stories are based on research outcomes, knowledge
from and observations in nature and other models. Nature Today shows the position that the platform
has in the business environment. Through the articles on the website or the media attention these
articles generate, Nature Today reaches a large public of nature enthusiastic. Part of this public are
employees of governments (local, provincial or national) and employees of companies looking for
information on nature. When these employees need more information on nature topics, for example
for business related questions, they can turn back to the researchers. Currently, Nature Today is
looking for new opportunities to broaden the supply of nature information. Two main ideas in the
developing phase being citizen science where people can contribute to research projects and an
application for location based nature information.
3
With their reader’s base of 66,000 monthly visitors Nature Today has created a platform where people
interested in multiple different topics about nature are united. This gives Nature Today the influence
to inform the public better, by reaching a larger public through their website, than all these researchers
or nature organizations could by themselves. Within the website a special media-module is
implemented to quickly and efficiently inform journalists. With this module they have to generate even
more media-attention, which is also positive for the associated nature organizations. Nature Today is
currently looking at new ways to reach their goal: informing the public about topical developments in
nature to strengthen the bond between both of them. This is why the new ideas of citizen science and
location based nature information are in a developing phase.
1.2 Aim of research The reason for this research is the need for a revenue model for Nature Today. The platform has been
established by governmental subsidies, but the subsidy has ended and the platform should now stand
on its own feet. At this moment Nature Today mainly depends on website banners and their affiliate
web shop for revenues. One of the main problems is that these revenues are insufficient for the
website to be operational. Other income sources have not yet been implemented. For example,
researchers and nature organizations publishing on the platform can still freely do so. These
researchers do invest time in writing news articles for Nature Today, but profiting from the exposure
these articles generate is free.
Nature Today wants to grow to a more sustainable business model where income is generated through
multiple channels. This income problem is recognized by other digital content providers as many of
these content companies are still leaning on advertisement incomes, while these incomes are declining
(Lacy 2009). Also the market for online advertisement blockers is rapidly increasing each year, putting
even more pressure on content companies relying on advertisement incomes. The expectation is that
these incomes will only decline in the future. That makes that the main objective for this research is to
provide Nature Today with recommendations on how to improve their business model in a way that a
financially self-sustainable platform is created. This requires an analysis of the current competences,
network and client base of Nature Today as well as an analysis of other successful content providers.
To tackle these problems, multiple research questions have been drafted which are presented in the
following paragraph.
1.3 Research questions Main research question:
• What are the business model components that should be implemented or improved by digital
content providers, like Nature Today, to create a financially self-sustainable platform?
Sub research questions:
o What are existing business models for digital content providers like Nature Today?
o What does Nature Today’s competitive environment look like?
o What does the target audience of Nature Today look like in terms of demographic
characteristics and motivations?
o How does the relation between researchers, nature organizations, NGO’s and Nature
Today benefit the content partners?
As indicated in the main research question, the main focus will be on the business model as a whole
instead of multiple income sources. The reason for this is that business models are directly related the
digital age and takes into account all factors that have an influence on successful (and profitable)
4
businesses (Zott et al. 2011). In the following chapter an overview of the existing literature will be given
about business models to understand the implications for the case of Nature Today.
The four sub research questions all partly provide the necessary information to answer the main
research question. The question about existing business models will look at best practices from other
successful business and identify the business model components that makes them successful. The sub
research question about the competitive environment will try to show the external influences on
performance, especially by identifying direct competitors. By identifying the unique selling point of
Nature Today their current position in the market is shown and other possible partnerships are
analyzed for future collaborations. The third question looks at the internal influences, from the current
users of the platform. Arnold van Vliet, founder of Nature Today, stated that he has limited deep
knowledge on the background of his visitors. Demographic characteristics, topics of interest and media
usage will be identified to see which changes need to be made to attract a larger audience or target
new user groups. The final research question is about the researchers who publish on the platform and
how they profit from this. These partners form the basis for the existence of the platform, but in
communication with Arnold van Vliet was said that these partners not all see the added value of Nature
Today. This research question aims to identify the direct and indirect benefits researchers gain from
this collaboration. Also the benefits that this collaboration brings Nature Today will be analyzed. At the
end of the research, suggestions for improvements will be given to improve the connection between
the two parties and to be more attractive to other nature organizations.
5
2 Literature review
2.1 Business models for digital content providers
2.1.1 Introduction
The first part of the literature review is about business models for digital content providers. In this
section the definition of a business model, which business models are used and how business models
can be created, will be discussed. A generic approach is used to make it generalizable to other online
information and content providers. Newspapers who are publishing articles online, popular blogs or
sports websites are examples of digital content providers that use a business model to be successful
in the digital content sector. A description of these existing models will be given as well as business
innovation tools to improve or innovate existing models.
Before describing the business models that are available for platforms like Nature Today, first has to
be made clear what a business model exactly is. Research by Zott et al. (2011) has shown that
researchers use different definitions that not always go together well. Research about business models
in general has grown exponentially in the past two decades, because of the increased popularity of the
Internet. This rise in popularity has changed the way business models are used in literature and pushed
the number of studies done on the subject exponentially (Magretta 2002, Zott et al. 2011). In the first
part of the century business model research focused on completion, value capture and competitive
advantage. Nowadays this changed to a focus on cooperation, partnerships, joint ventures and a
central role for the customer (Magretta 2002, Mäkinen and Seppänen 2007).
A general confusion about business models is that they are related to the marketing strategy of a
company or to their corporate strategy. A business model includes a more complex set of network
relations and activities between multiple actors in the business environment than only marketing or
corporate strategy. A business model can, however, be a form of competitive advantage (Zott et al.
2011). A competitive advantage of digital content providers can be exploited when investing in one of
the three, or a combination of, components that have been introduced by Weill and Vitale (2013):
1. The content a company or organization publishes.
2. The experience a customer gets when visiting the company’s website.
3. The design of the platform.
It is not necessary to be a leader in all three components to be successful, which means that leadership
in one element could create significant revenue streams (Weill and Woerner 2013).
For this research the definition of a business model introduced by Morris et al. (2005) is used because
it has been cited often for similar studies. Their definition of a business model is: “a concise
representation of how an interrelated set of decision variables in the areas of venture strategy,
architecture, and economics are addressed to create sustainable competitive advantage in defined
markets”. According to the researchers there are six components where companies should focus on:
1. value proposition, 2. customer, 3. internal processes/competencies, 4. external positioning, 5.
economic model, and 6. personal/investor factors. The advantage of this definition is that it contains
multiple factors that influence business models. These factors give Nature Today the opportunity to
look critically at how they perform on each of these factors.
Summarized by Zott et al. (2011), most business model studies show that four common themes keep
coming back:
6
1. The business model is used as a unit of analysis that goes further than the product it sells or
the network it operates in.
2. Business models explain how companies do their business.
3. The activities of a company play a central role.
4. Business models explain how value is created, not how it is captured.
2.1.2 Business Model Canvas of Nature Today
The business model canvas (BMC) was developed by Osterwalder and Pigneur (2010). The BMC can
help businesses like Nature Today to define their values and actions. The model consists of nine
elements related to business performance. These are: key partners, key activities, key resources, value
proposition, customer relationship, channels, customer segments, cost structure and revenue. Each of
these elements contain a different aspect of a business model and per element an all elements
combined show the business strategy of a company or organization. In the results section the case of
Nature Today and the outcomes of the survey will be inserted in this canvas. This section will create a
description of the current situation and the preferred situation for Nature Today after an analysis of
the survey results.
2.1.3 Different types of business models
Weill and Woerner (2015) have identified four business models that can be applied by digital content
providers (Fout! Verwijzingsbron niet gevonden.3): omni-channel business, ecosystem driver, supplier
and modular producer.
Figure 3: Types of business models for online companies by Weill & Woerner (2015)
These business models are different in terms of:
• The way the business is designed: as a value chain or an ecosystem.
• How much knowledge the company has about their end consumers.
7
The case of Nature Today is most likely to be placed in the supplier group, as their knowledge is the
end customer is incomplete and they are not yet part of a large economic ecosystem. They provide
their customers with knowledge gathered from other sources like researchers, nature organizations
and NGO’s. This brings a potential for loss of power when sources decide to set up their own
communication program and stop providing Nature Today with articles. Finally, it is relatively cheap to
produce information articles since no extra materials are used for the production. With this research
the platform hopes and needs to go to the ecosystem driver phase to be financially more stable.
2.1.4 Tools for digital content providers
A tool that can be adopted by digital content providers is designed by Bocken et al. (2013) and is called
the value mapping tool. This tool is used to develop new sustainable business models. It has three
aims: learning to understand positive and negative elements of the value proposition, to analyses
whether there are existing conflicting values between stakeholders and to identify opportunities in
redesigning the business model to overcome negative outcomes, so overall performance of the
business model is improved – mainly for the society and the environment. The value mapping tool is
presented as Fout! Verwijzingsbron niet gevonden.4:
The value mapping tool is used from the inside outwards, so the purpose is the starting point. After that the value captured, the value destroyed (negative social or environmental impacts) and value missed (failing to monetize existing assets, resources, networks or capabilities) are identified. Those three phases give insight in the failed value exchange of the current business model. As these three stages have been analyzed for all different stakeholders found in the outer ring, the value opportunities (creating new or improved products and services to customers) are analyzed. This phase looks at the
Figure 4: Value Mapping Tool by Bocken et al. (2013)
8
opportunities to create new revenue channels to resolve the value that is currently being missed or destroyed. By analyzing all factors that are affected by an organizations performance, value can be created for the business environment as a whole. The process of moving from value proposition to value destroyed/value missed towards new opportunities has had specific attention in the research of Bocken et al. 2013. They have developed a value innovation tool to clarify these stages, which is presented as Figure 55. This tool was developed for four reasons:
1. There was no focus on sustainability (or social/environmental value) in multiple other business innovation tools.
2. A limited amount of these models focused on all stakeholders in the business environment. 3. Most tools only identify negative impacts of a business and the ways to reduce them, while
leaving out the opportunities these impacts create. 4. Innovation nowadays requires the development of new collaborations beyond the traditional
business environment.
Figure 5: Value innovation tool by Bocken et. al (2013)
In this model the stages are described from the value proposition, which plays the central role. In the
value destroyed phase companies should look at their negative social and environmental impacts and
how these can be re-conceptualized as missed value. In a favorable case these could be turned into an
opportunity for the new value creation. Also destroyed value could be changed directly into a value
adding option. In the value missed phase the assets, resources, networks and capabilities that are not
yet monetized, or are missing opportunities to capture value, should be analyzed and turned into new
business opportunities. In this way all former ways of doing business have been looked at,
reformulated or re-conceptualized into something that should be of added value for the business
model.
9
2.1.5 Value capture innovation
Companies are trying to capture as much value as possible with their set of skills. When the current set of actions performed by companies is not working sufficiently anymore, an innovation in the process is necessary. Euchner & Ganguly (2013) designed a framework for companies to innovate their business model and is presented as Figure 66. By innovating, companies can create a new market for their products or disrupt their competitive advantage. This could mean creating new capabilities by companies, but only if this disrupts the existing competitive environment of a company (Euchner & Ganguly 2013). Furthermore, it is important that an innovation matches with the current business model and the company’s internal competencies in order for it to be successful (Chesbrough 2006).
Figure 6: Stages of business model innovation by Euchner & Ganguly (2013)
The purpose of the model is to reduce risks by learning through experiments with customers and partners before it is incubated in the market. The six stages have the following implications: 1. Demonstrate value creation – A clear view on how the innovation will create value for customers. To be successful, it is important to start with meeting customer’s demands and needs. Real world data is needed to answer questions like: what are our customers actually doing? And how much could we improve by the innovation in practice? 2. Generate business model options – A good business model will allow companies to capture a large part of the value created, in a way that is hard to replicate. There might be multiple good business models, the challenge for companies is to select the best one. These should have three characteristics: they are coherent (how does every part in the innovation work together?), they offer competitive advantage (what differentiates it from other and makes it interesting for customers?) and they provide some form of economic leverage (can it be produced on a large scale?). 3. Identify the risks for each option generated – Before a new innovation can be implemented, it has to be clear what the possible risks are. These risks can be divided in three types: business execution risks (costs of all items concerned with implementing the innovation), co-innovation risks (innovations that others need to create in order for a business model to work) and adoption risks (creating alignment among stakeholders before bringing the innovation on the market). Some risks cannot be controlled by innovators themselves, these are called ecosystems risks (Adner 2006).
10
4. Prioritize the risks – all variables that could have an effect on success or failure of an innovated business model should be identified and quantified. Variables with the highest probability of happening should be dealt with first. 5. Reduce risk through business experiments – in this phase the innovation is tested in the real world with prototypes, simulated user experiences or other types of trials. The experiments should be designed in a way to validate assumptions that were made before the experiment was set up and they should reduce risks associated with the experiment. This set up is related to the ‘lean’ approach (Ries 2011) which states that crucial learning happens with real customers and it brings the innovation from the hypothesis phase to the proof that things work in practice. 6. Organize for incubation – the final phase is the incubation phase, in which the main goals are to demonstrate profitability and scalability in the market and to identify a business-building strategy.
2.2 Digital platforms
2.2.1 Introduction
In this chapter the current knowledge from literature about digital platforms will be described. Platforms in literature are described as “a set of subsystems and interfaces that forms a common structure from which a company can efficiently develop and produce a family of automobile products or consumer electronic devices” (Meyer and Lehnerd 1997, Muffatto and Roveda 2002). Not only the electronic device (mobile, laptop, tv) is important, also the software used and interface of the platform. Research by Clickfox (2011) has shown that 72% of customers would replace traditional communication channels with mobile apps. Nowadays there is even more time spend on apps then on websites (Business Insider 2013). Especially younger people state that a good digital experience with an organization is important. Weill and Woerner (2013) described that offering better performing online platforms creates a 8.5% higher net profit and a 7.8% higher growth rate than competitors lacking an advanced digital environment. Since comparing different platforms through search engines, comparison web sites or review sites became a lot easier, this will favor organizations with a well-designed platform in the future even further (Weill and Vitale 2013). Digital platforms have created new abilities for organizations to increase product variety, meet
customer and business needs and making technical advancements while still the economies of scale
are rising (Gawer and Cusumano 2014). Platforms are closely related to the concept of mass-
customization introduced by Pine (1993) which is the combination of the lower cost due to mass
production while still being flexible enough to customize products for individuals. Because of these
lower production and coordination costs, new opportunities for platforms as intermediaries are
created. Multiple examples of today’s largest online companies like Amazon or E-Bay have invested
tremendously in their platforms since it’s the place where their users’ needs are bundled (Brousseau
and Penard 2007). This is also because in the online world, brand names have become even more
important and they are seen as key factor of a relationship with customers. Nowadays brand names
are linked to personality, loyalty, and value of the products, services or information delivered. All of
this is communicated through a website (Ries and Ries 2000, Rowley 2004).
2.2.2 Survival of digital platforms
For the long-run survival of platforms Brousseau and Penard (2007) created a guideline about what their incentives should be, how they should create added value, how they can cover their costs and how they should deal with competitors. They state that the main goal of platforms should be to organize exchange and production, to assemble components and manage information and knowledge. This means the exchange of information and products between constructors, developers or writers and the customer. A platform can be developed in three ways:
11
1. As a pure market intermediary like dating services or a market place. 2. As an assembler like social media. 3. As a knowledge provider like Wikipedia.
A combination of those components is also possible, as this goes for companies like Google and Amazon. For each of these three platform-types a scale was created. Figure 77 presents the scale developed by Brousseau and Penard (2007) for assemblers, which fits the case of Nature Today the best, because they combine the information from multiple nature organizations to create one large nature news database.
Figure 7: Assemblers platform identity by Brousseau and Penard (2007)
The two differentiating factors of this model are: the marketing method and the range of packages.
The marketing methods means how the content is priced. Free content is related with pollution
because there is no revenue to guarantee quality content, while this would be the case for fee based
content. The range of packages is about the variety of products offered by a company. A wide range
of topics and subjects would be placed on the right, while a very specialized focus is narrow and would
be placed on the left.
2.2.3 Designing a digital platform
When designing a digital platform, the focus should be on customer experience and the services a company offers. For being more successful as a platform than competitors it needs a competitive advantage, which means the ability to create more value than the others (Porter 1985). When a company focusses on creating customer value without using their competitive advantage, this will weaken their value proposition, leading to less growth potential (Euchner & Ganguly 2013). Customer value is created by three elements according to Weill and Woerner (2013): 1. Content - The quality of the content offered on a platform. 2. Packaging – how the user experience is delivered to all different types of digital platforms like
mobile phones, TV’s or laptops. 3. Infrastructure – The internal and external software platform that can be reached worldwide Especially the third element - how many people reach your platform - is important as platforms are known to have network effect. The more people start using a platform, the more valuable it becomes to owners and users. A growing network could also lead to new (complementary) investments and innovations of the platform. This creates another cumulative advantage in that the barrier for newcomers to enter the market becomes higher if existing platforms keep on innovating (Gawer and
12
Cusumano 2014). However, this could lead to the innovators dilemma: having a successful client base comes from the company’s products and strategy it is currently selling and using. New innovations could lead to losing your loyal customer base when an innovation will not be favorably received (Christenson 1997). Eventually a platform could become some sort of an ecosystem where mutual beneficial relationships are built between members which gives rise to new opportunities in the sector. (Gawer and Cusumano 2014).
2.2.4 Internal vs. external platforms
Platforms have been used in many different fields: new product development, operations management, technology strategy and industrial economics (Meyer and Lehnerd 1997, Evans 2002, Eisenmann, Parker et al. 2006). However, all of these can be linked to two types of platforms: internal platforms that are company-specific and external platforms that are industry-wide (Gawer and Cusumano 2014). Internal platforms are described as the assets a company stores and that are organized in a common structure, so they can develop and create a stream of new and improved products (Muffatto and Roveda 2002). External platforms are products, services or technologies a company already produced, but which form the basis for outside firms to develop their own complementary products, services and technologies (Gawer and Cusumano 2014). Both platform link in the fact they provide a common ground for developing component and technologies. For external platforms this sometimes leads to the paradoxical situation were competition and collaboration sometimes occurs between the same actors. For instance, this happens in the case of Samsung producing chips for Apple IPhone while being there main rival in that same smartphone market. The platforms of large companies are often key resources in their economic ecosystem, but still highly dependent on innovations and investment from upstream suppliers, downstream customers and complementors. Not how much innovations takes place is important, but where these innovations take place (Adner and Kapoor 2010).
2.3 Marketing digital content
2.3.1 Introduction
The third part of the literature about business models for digital content providers is the marketing
part. In the upcoming sections the general knowledge about digital content and the marketing of
business models will be described. One of the hardest things for monetizing online information can be
explained from the definition of digital content: bit-based objects distributed through electronic
channels. This means that for the marketing of these bit-based objects the entity and the delivery are
digital (Koiso-Kanttila 2004, Swatman, Krueger et al. 2006). This has implications for traditional media
and publishing industries because the marketing for this content is different from traditional marketing
practices, which is explained in Figure 88. The definition used in this research for digital content
marketing is: the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating, and satisfying
customer requirements profitably in the context of digital content, or bit-based objects distributed
through electronic channels (Rowley 2008). This new marketing method needed is creating new
opportunities for companies while on the other hand is wrecking traditionally successful business
models. This process is described as disruption (Weill and Woerner 2015).
13
Figure 8: Differences traditional media and online media by Rowley (2008)
2.3.2 Digital content characteristics
Before the possible revenue streams from digital content can be analyzed, it is necessary to clarify the
characteristics of digital content. There have been multiple researches done by Eaton and Bawden
(1991), Freiden, Goldsmith et al. (1998) and Koiso-Kanttila (2004) about these characteristics. Rowley
(2008) collected these outcomes and translated them to characteristics of digital content:
1. Value is contextual – the value of digital content is dependent on the context and how it is used. It is dependent on the willingness of users to pay for it and it is hard to predict how this value will change over time.
2. Reproducibility and multiplicability – digital content is not lost when multiplied, but it might reduce its economic value. It is also multipliable as it’s ‘consumption’ will not lead to loss of the product. The same goes for reproducing information, leading to illegal versions of the same information, which has led to literature links between digital content and intellectual property rights (Fotopoulos, Vassiliadis et al. 2004, Umeh 2007).
3. Interactivity – content is acquired to be integrated with information from other sources to improve decision-making, plans and actions or create improved information products. On an individual level it is linked to the learning process and improving cognitive abilities.
4. Repackage-ability – digital content is available in different forms, like text, images or videos. They can be accessed via different databases through multiple web pages. It is difficult to see whether content is original or authentic, as much content is an improved version of existing information like academic articles. The core is always information, but it comes in different functional forms.
5. Delivery and technology – the technology is key in delivering content between two actors. Delivery can only be achieved when technology between both actors is sufficient in terms of hardware specifications and network possibilities.
6. Perishability – digital content does not deteriorate over time, while the medium through which it is spread could. The value might decrease when new information is introduced, replacing the old ideas.
7. Homogeneity – digital content is very homogeneous, as each copy is identical to the earlier one and the original.
14
8. Inseparability – digital content is a good, more than a service, because it is produced, stored (on a pc or server) and transported, while it can exist without being consumed.
9. Tangibility – content itself is intangible, while it could be stored on a USB or computer what would be the tangible part.
2.3.3 Opportunities for digital marketing
Companies in different fields have been struggling with the move from offline to online business marketing. Around 32% of sales in traditional markets is pressured by the digital market (Weill and Woerner 2015). Threats also offers opportunities, because companies selling over half of their products via online channels, and have a good understanding of their target audience, experience 27% higher revenue margins than market competitors. From this can be concluded that digital marketing is especially successful in combination with knowledge of your end customer. Customer knowledge consists of their names, addresses, demographics, IP-address, purchase history and (most importantly) their upcoming life events (Weill and Woerner 2015). The upcoming digitization offers opportunities to increase the relationship with the customer and to increase cross-selling. Cross-selling is the opportunity to sell an additional product or service to an existing customer. The disadvantage of digitization is the threat of competitors having a better understanding of these end customers, which makes them able to address their products and services better to the same customers (Li, Sun et al. 2005).
To get more knowledge about end customers a company needs to know their opinion. Whether they are satisfied, what their wishes are and how they could use big-data to improve knowledge on their own customers. This creates a business model where a company does not try to convince customers to buy, but where a company tries to meet customer needs (Weill and Vitale 2013). Many studies have shown that superior customer value is of major importance for ensuring business success. This means that digital content providers who are able to assist customers in formulating value expectations and associations will profit the most (Porter 1996, Reichheld, Markey Jr et al. 2000). This is however not an easy process as online environments are constantly changing due to technological developments, which offers new possibilities for customizing and accessing digital content (Rowley 2008).
2.3.4 Economic ecosystem
Companies can improve by becoming some sort of an economic ecosystem with all involved parties within and outside the company and their partners in the sector. The main goal is to be the leader in a sector before main competitors. This requires a good brand name, meeting customers’ needs and receiving good customer recommendations. Secondly, companies need partnerships with complementary product and service providers. Also payment and delivery providers can be a part of this. Furthermore, companies need to identify their core business (unique selling point) and making this easily available for customers and partners. And finally, make compliance a competence because digitization raises questions about online privacy issues and cyber threats and the possibility of failing digital channels (Weill and Woerner 2015). According to (Rowley 2008) digital content providers should look for strategies to bind users to their content and create a community. Digital content managers need to:
1. Create a network with all stakeholders in the same value chain to manage the channel at both operational and user experience level.
2. Keep developing digital content places and platforms where customers are active. 3. Pricing strategies need to be employed that have a customer value perspective instead of a
producer or marketplace perspective. At last branding should not be forgotten, because customers link quality and value of information to the company that spreads the information. This creates a challenge for a company’s communication department.
15
2.4 Revenue methods
2.4.1 Introduction
Several researchers have tried to investigate models for monetizing Internet websites. The most well-known business models include advertising, but the incomes from advertising are declining (Lacy 2009). Other business models for websites are divided by Clemons (2009) into two categories: The first category sells products, experiences, content or services and they profit from these sales. The other category gives access to the users and charges them for it. As a column by the Economist (2009) wrote: “there is a need for paying for content instead of leaning on advertising incomes. It is impossible that content will keep on being freely available, because writers need income for their stories and advertising doesn’t seem to give that. This will remain extremely difficult because advertisements have three disadvantages (Clemons 2009): 1). Overall consumers do not trust advertisements, 2). Consumers do not want to see advertisements. This can be derived from the growing numbers of adblocker users. This is even more applicable for the mobile market were nowadays a total of 419 million people are blocking ads, totaling a 22% of all smartphone users (Pagefair 2016). Consumers do not need advertisements as online information about the products they are interested in is freely available.
2.4.2 Monetizing methods
This asks for new monetizing methods, Clemons (2009) advices three ways of creating income:
• Selling real things (examples: Bol.com or Amazon)
• Selling virtual things (examples: in game accessories or information for virtual communities)
• Selling access (examples: location based information or a second layer in a website).
Nature Today is most likely to be linked to the ‘Selling Access’ part, when they want people to pay for their content. Clemons divides two monetizing models for this: pay per view and pay per subscription. Examples of pay per view is Blendle, the company where a single news article can be bought. Most other content sites use subscription models, where users get full access to all content and features of that platform for a monthly or yearly payment. When promoting these subscription models Pauwels and Weiss (2008) suggest for first time product payment methods to go for temporary subscriptions, preferably monthly over yearly. The main reason being that the customer is not used to being committed to pay for content and are not willing to be committed for a year. This matches with the idea that minimal commitment leaves the possibility open for users to try and evaluate the content (Rogers and Shoemaker 1971). However, moving to a paid business models, does indirectly lower your advertising incomes as visitors numbers will decrease, while subscription incomes will be higher (Pauwels and Weiss 2008). The number of paid subscribers is dependent on multiple variables like:
• Consumer characteristics (price sensitivity, perceived content value).
• Competitive characteristics (market concentration, content overlap, pricing schemes).
• Company characteristics (content restriction, marketing strategy).
When a company decides to move to paid content this slows down the growth of free users directly, which reduces the effectiveness of marketing strategy in generating new free users. This marketing strategy is the major revenue component in stimulating new subscriptions (Pauwels and Weiss 2008). Companies can, according to Pauwels and Weiss (2008), expect lower revenue from making subscriptions paid when they:
16
1. Make the move from free to fee before free subscriptions has showed momentum, this is the time when free subscriptions are smoothing.
2. Set prices higher than the consumers’ willingness to pay. 3. Are competing with a dominant competitor with superior content quality, lower prices or better
end customer knowledge. 4. Charge fees for all (previously free) content. 5. Companies do not invest in marketing communication to convince free users to pay or to attract
new (potential) paying members. To be able to profit from an idea or informational content it should meet two conditions: it should be able to extract value from a unique asset and it should not be easy to duplicate. When it comes to content suppliers like newspapers or Nature Today the unique assets are the fact-checking and reputation of that certain source. On the other hand, the news can easily be taken over by other sources leaving out the other critical aspect of profiting from the idea (Teece 1986). Clemons (2009) suggests a short-term copyright to tackle this point. To calculate the actual value of the content there are six drivers of digital content value: 1. price, 2. accuracy, 3. timeliness, 4. completeness, 5. appeal and 6. interactivity. The pricing is dependent on what is offered for the money: either a transfer of ownership, access to content or a license to use a certain product or knowledge for a specific period of time (Rangan and Adner 2001).
2.5 Conceptual framework The literature described in the previous sections gave an overview of all relevant theories for digital
content providers. This has been divided into four different topics: business models, digital platforms,
digital content marketing and revenue streams. This section will provide a simplified new framework
with all most important elements of the described theories. The framework that is created will be used
as a glass through which the problem of Nature Today is researched. In this way, it also sets clear
boundaries to the study and shows in which ways these theories are relevant for the case.
The first section described the elements that a business model consists of. The definition of Morris et
al. (2005) and the Business Model Canvas of Osterwalder and Pigneur (2010) both identified elements
that are important for a business model. The following figure shows the comparison between both
models:
Figure 9: Business model elements compared
This figure shows that all elements from the business model canvas are more detailed. The canvas focusses on internal competencies that can be influenced by the company itself, whereas Morris et al. also takes external factors, like competitors, into account. Also personal factors are not included in
17
BMC, while this is an important factor for Nature Today. The current team behind the platform is limited and radical business model changes will have consequences for the founders. Whether proposed changes are implemented is their decision. The general analysis in the results section will make use of the elements of the BMC, since these are more detailed. The personal factors will be added within the BMC elements and for the external competitors a specific research questions is created. The results section will identify the current situation for each element and the preferred new situation.
From all theories a conceptual framework can be created. This framework is presented as figure 11 and shows how theory merges into results and recommendations.
Figure 10: Conceptual framework
The described theories for business models and digital content form the basis of the analysis. Both theories have led to a description of relevant elements, which have been processed in the survey questions. With the outcomes from these elements a sketch of the current situation can be created. After that the business model innovation tool of Bocken et al. (2013) is introduced, which looks at the described elements and analyses whether Nature Today currently misses value or destroys value and looks at the opportunities that arise for new value creation. After this analysis a new business model for Nature Today can be created. The new business model should always measure up to three things according to Euchner and Ganguly (2013): it is coherent with the current characteristics of Nature Today, it should be clear how the users profit from the innovation and it should be possible to produce it on a large scale. This is why the improvements might need testing before they are fully implemented to see the response of the customers.
18
2.6 Analysis of successful digital content providers In the digital landscape there are multiple examples of companies who have succeeded in
implementing a business model that created stable revenue over the past years. These companies can
be a major inspiration for new start-ups, but also are perfect examples for companies that are looking
to improve their current business model like Nature Today. This section will identify the similarities
between the most successful companies and Nature Today, what competences these companies have
and how the business model of Nature Today has to be adjusted and the competences implemented
to be more successful.
The digital magazine EContent summed up the top 100 most successful companies in the digital
content industry. During the analysis of these companies and their competitive advantages, a common
ground with Nature Today was searched for. In total there were twelve categories where the top 100
companies were divided into and Table 1: Top 100 companies divided per categoryTable 1 shows how
often each category was mentioned in the list (EContent 2016):
Table 1: Top 100 companies divided per category by EContent
Category Times mentioned
Web Content Management 21
Big Data 18
Distribution & Delivery 16
Content Creation 15
Content Translation, Localization & Globalization 13
Digital Marketing Technologies 13
Analytics 11
Mobile content 9
Online Video 6
Social Media 6
Content Commerce 3
Most companies are active in the web content management sector. Web content management is a
software program or system that helps companies to manage and adjust websites in an
understandable format so digital content can easily be published and overseen. Companies in this
sector created tools for all different types of companies to make their content more attractive for their
customers. These tools help companies to connect their content to customer’s needs. Most popular
method for this is personalized content creation. This means that visitors of a website can either
personalize it for their own wishes or that the website adjusts itself when a visitor searches for some
items more often. What this shows is that personalized and customized websites or platform are
deemed to be very important by successful companies.
The second most common category is big data, successful companies gather a lot of information about
their customers. This data is turned into concrete action plans for companies, making big data an
essential part of every larger and successful company. The top 100 companies in the big data are
mostly occupied with developing tools to make the big data visual. With this visual interpretation
companies should be able to improve marketing, product development and decision-making. This
shows that a constantly keeping track of users wishes, preferences and satisfaction is an essential
element of successful businesses.
The third most common category is distribution and delivery. Customers are getting used to being
served everywhere at any time, which creates logistic challenges for companies to get their products
19
on time to consumers. This is also the case for the sector of Nature Today; the publishing industry.
People expect new news articles daily, expect the quality to be high and without mistakes and to be
delivered to them through multiple media channels. The large companies show that investing in all
these channels is a key activity for being successful.
Conclusion
Looking at the most successful companies in the digital content industry we can see that everything
evolves around customers. All the categories that Econtent Magazine used can be linked to increasing
customer knowledge and customer satisfaction. This is in line with the trend that companies evolved
from being product centered to customer centered (Weill and Vitale 2013). For Nature Today this
means that they should track customer needs and customer satisfaction which should lead to products
and services that better connect to their needs. It could also widen the products and services range
Nature Todays offers. Finally, the way in which news articles are presented, the content creation part,
appears to be increasingly important. News articles should be interesting to read, but the platform
should also be appealing to visit. Nature Today should find the perfect balance between delivering
qualitative news articles, attractiveness in their website and clarity in the navigation through the
platform.
20
3 Methodology The previous chapters introduced the theoretical background of this research, the background of the
case study and the drawn research questions. The purpose of this chapter is to give an overview of the
research methods, which are used to answer these research questions. The ultimate aim of the
research is to provide Nature Today with a financially self-sustainable business model. All methods
contributing to the solution of this aim are described in this chapter. The introduction chapter already
mentioned the case study analysis which will be adopted for this research. The first part of this chapter
will describe this adopted method in more detail. The second section introduces the data collection
methods, including literature review, interviews and the survey. The third section involves the data
analysis methods including the market- and competitor analysis.
3.1 Case study For this research the case of Nature Today will be used. Nature Today is an online platform where the
latest nature research insights are published. Through Wageningen University I heard that the platform
had problems with gathering enough revenue streams. With this is mind, the general problems in the
online information industry were connected with the income problem of Nature Today and concluded
that they would be a relevant case study. A case study has the ability to overlook and understand cases,
processes and different dynamics within a unit of study (Kumar 2011).
Stake (1978) also argued that case studies do have a natural basis for generalization to other cases,
because it is found to be a direct and satisfying way of adding experience on a subject and improve its
understanding. This is what he calls naturalistic generalization, the ability to apply knowledge and
outcomes from one case to another similar case. In this specific research this would be other digital
content providers like online newspapers, sports websites and blogs. The limitation with this approach
however is that single members often do not represent all members of a group. This could be
overcome by describing all relevant and necessary elements of the case, so specific elements of the
case might be generalizable, instead of the whole case (Stake 1978). For this research the reason for
choosing the case of Nature Today comes from the availability of data and the direct link with the
founder of the platform. With the help and knowledge from Arnold van Vliet, the founder of Nature
Today, this research has the possibility to give all necessary insights about this case. This creates more
relevant and generalizable results and increases external validity.
3.2 Data collection This research used a quantitative approach, because the data was gathered in a (semi-)structured way
to a large sample group and will be used to generalize to a larger group of content providers. Multiple
methods were adopted to gain insights on the topic. This approach can be seen as a positivism
approach, as the quantitative methods have a good reliability and representativeness. With the use of
a case study I hope to discover patterns and regularities, which are applicable by other content
providers (Denscombe 1998). This section will describe all methods that were used to collect the data,
how this data was approached and how it was processed. Each method is linked to a specific research
question. The three data collection methods were a literature review, interviews and a survey.
3.2.1 Literature review
The first step in pursuing data for this research is by performing an academic literature review to analyze the existing qualitative and quantitative knowledge in the research field. The academic literature search strategy was focused on identifying the relevant subjects and research concepts like business models for digital content providers, business model innovation, digital platforms and digital content marketing. These concepts were presented in a literature review and linked to the case of Nature Today in the discussion section. To make sure that no valuable data was overlooked, multiple
21
scientific databases from Wageningen University were used, like Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus, CAB Abstracts and LexisNexis. When answering the research questions, the first sub-question was answered by literature review only. An in-depth analysis of business models identified the different components a business model is made up of, which were presented in the conceptual framework. These business model elements, together with the parameters of digital content, have been the basis for innovating the current business model of Nature Today.
3.2.2 Interviews
Small semi-structured interviews were held with people currently not visiting the Nature Today website. In the first phase of the research, people from all different demographic backgrounds were approached to help with this research. To gather a differentiated group, the church where I used to go to was used. This resulted in a sample population with different demographic characteristics like age, educational background and current field of work. These interviews were held to form a basis for the creation of a survey. This interview asked for a first impression about the Nature Today website and asked participants to notify everything that stood out for them. With the answers given about the first experience with Nature Todays website and their analysis of possible improvements, extra questions or extra answer options were added to the survey. The reason for doing these kind of interviews was to prevent researchers tunnel vision about the website. It is easy to overlook things when you have seen a website very often. Also different views on what a good platform should look like were taken into account with these interviews. In total 20 people were interviewed for an average period of 5-10 minutes per interview, table 2 gives a description of demographic characteristics of the interviewed group. Table 2: Anonymized data of interviewed people
Male, 25, HBO, Bank & Insurance Male, 71, MBO, Agriculture
Male, 21, HAVO, Student Female, 69, HBO, Healthcare
Female, 49, HBO, Education Male, 51, HBO, Education
Female, 72, HBO, Education Female, 48, HBO, Culture
Male, 74, MBO, Construction Male, 58, WO, Finance
Female, 54, WO, Culture Female, 55, WO, Healthcare
Female, 23, WO, Student Female, 18, VWO, Student
Male, 55, HBO, Business Male, 15, HAVO, Student
Female, 84, VMBO, agriculture Male, 46, WO, Government
Female, 44, WO, Healthcare Male, 20, VWO, Student
3.2.3 Survey
The majority of the data collected in this research is done through a survey, because a large part of this research is about getting to know the visitors of Nature Today. The survey questions had to make clear who they are and what their wishes and needs are. Also the connection between researchers and the companies and governments was taken into account. Arnold van Vliet hoped that by gaining media attention through the platform, governments and companies would find the their way back to researchers when do need them to do projects. The survey tries to find out whether this relation is really established through the platform. The survey was spread through the website of Nature Today and was also linked to the weekly newsletter, which has 13.000 subscribers. The survey had 56 questions in total and the average time spent on the survey was between 15 and 20 minutes. Although this is a fair amount of time, 1869 persons responded to the survey. From these people 1523 completed the whole survey. The survey itself was created through the website of Qualtrics, because they offer a tool to easily implement different kind of questions and answering methods. For some questions only the fully completed
22
surveys were used. The reason for this was because the most important demographic characteristics were asked at the end of the survey. Without these characteristics the other answers had less value, and because the number of respondents was high the validity was not jeopardized. The reason for putting the demographic characteristics at the end was because people are sometimes reluctant to give personal information, and are more likely to do so when they have already spend a decent amount of time answering other questions. The survey questions can be found in Appendix 1 – Survey and the answers to these questions are presented in Appendix 3 – Survey results. The respondents were nearly all visitors of the Nature Today website, giving a clear image of all different user and age groups. The importance of gathering information from all different age and user groups comes from the possibility that outcomes might differ considerably per group. With the extensive knowledge on the visitors of Nature Today, the owners of the platform will be able to meet customer needs better. This information is also interesting for organizations publishing on Nature Today, as it gives them the insight how to reach more nature lovers with their news articles. The outcomes of the survey can directly be used for answering research question two and three about the competitive environment and the target audience. Also insight were gained to answer the fourth research question about the benefits for Nature Todays partners.
3.3 Data analysis The data that was collected from the literature review, interviews and survey was enormous and needed an analysis strategy. The main analysis was done in a coding program called Atlas.ti 8.0. In this program all qualitative data was inserted and labelled with a specific code. These were the first order categories as defined by Gioia (2013). Appendix 2 shows screenshots of the program in use, including how was coded, for which questions and what a tree for a specific research question looks like. As the survey had multiple questions with an open answer possibility, the number of open answers was extensive. With these answers clustered it was easier to recognize relations between given answers or to channel answers given to a certain research question. In this way all concepts related to a certain business model element of Nature Today could be grouped, which provided me with a clear overview of the situation. This was done by assigning the first order codes to specific research questions. These research questions were then assigned to the elements of the business model. For the analysis of the results the Business Model Canvas was used as a guideline. Table 3 shows the division of each research question to a certain BMC-element, which helped to structure the answer building in the results chapter.
Table 3: Division of survey questions to BMC-elements
BMC Elements Survey questions
Value proposition
Waarom bezoekt u Nature Today.com? Hoe vaak geeft u natuurwaarnemingen door? Bent u betrokken bij natuurbeheer en natuurbeleid?
Key activities Welk vrijwilligerswerk doet u op het gebied van natuur? Bent u betrokken bij natuurbeheer/natuurbeleid? Hoe? Zou u door Nature Today geïnformeerd willen worden over (natuur)activiteiten, georganiseerd door de organisatie die berichten schrijven op Nature Today.com? Zo ja, welke activiteiten? Zo nee, waarom niet? Over welke onderwerpen zou u webinars willen bekijken? Over welke bestaande natuurbeleid/ natuurwaarneming/natuurbeheer onderwerpen zou u berichten op Nature Today.com willen zien? Wat voor onderwerpen over natuur in het buitenland zou u interessant vinden om te lezen? Welke natuurberichten mist u nog op Nature Today?
23
Key resources Over welke categorieën leest u het liefst natuurberichten? Hoe overzichtelijk vindt u de website van Nature Today? Hoe vaak geeft u natuurwaarnemingen door? Van welke soortengroepen? Hoe overzichtelijk vindt u de website van Nature Today? Welke natuurberichten mist u nog op Nature Today? Op welke manier geeft u weleens waarnemingen door? Op welke manier helpt de informatie op NatureToday.com u met het doen van waarnemingen? Over welke van de onderstaande natuurwaarneming onderwerpen zou u berichten op NatureToday.com willen zien?
Customer relationship
Zou u natuurberichten lezen als ze alleen in het Engels beschikbaar zijn? Hoe vaak bezoekt u Nature Today.com? Zou u door Nature Today geïnformeerd willen worden over (natuur)activiteiten, georganiseerd door de organisatie die berichten schrijven op Nature Today.com? Zo ja, welke activiteiten? Zo nee, waarom niet?
Channels Hoe weet u van het bestaan van Nature Today.com? Op welke social media bent u actief? Bent u geabonneerd op de nieuwsbrief van Nature Today? Via welke kanalen wilt u geïnformeerd worden door Nature Today?
Customer segments
Wat is uw geslacht? Wat is uw leeftijd? Wat is uw hoogst genoten opleiding? Waar haalt u uw natuurinformatie vandaan? Bij wat voor organisatie bent u werkzaam?
Key partners Waar haalt u uw natuurinformatie vandaan? Welke natuurapps gebruikt op dit moment? Welke vogelapps? Van welke organisaties bent u lid/donateur? Wat voor onderwerpen over natuur in het buitenland zou u interessant vinden om te lezen op Nature Today?
Cost structure
Revenue streams
Bent u zich bewust van de advertenties op de website van Nature Today? Bent u bekend met de webshop van Nature Today? Voor welke productcategorieën doet u wel eens online/mobiel aankopen? Zou u bereid zijn een financiële bijdrage te geven aan Nature Today om het in stand te houden? Zo ja, hoeveel zou u jaarlijks bereid zijn te doneren? Over welke onderwerpen zou u webinars willen bekijken?
3.3.1 Market - and competitor analysis
Information was collected about the competitors and potential partners in the business environment. With an analysis is shown what the possible competitors and partners are, what is already provided on the market and where market possibilities can be fulfilled by the content from Nature Today. From the competitors was analyzed: what they are doing differently, which types of competitors they are targeting and through which channels they are active. This analysis gave a clear image of the saturation of the market for nature content. Also possible partners were revealed, as collaboration between parties with similar end goals as Nature Today might increase the reach of the platform.
24
3.4 Research framework In the previous chapters and sections the case, the theories and the methods for this research are
introduced. The research strategy for answer building can be summarized in a research framework.
The research framework consist of four parts: the theoretical part in which the relevant literature is
discussed and analyzed. The empirical part which is the qualitative and quantitative research methods
for data collection. The analysis part where the outcomes of the data collection are discussed and the
final part is the concluding part where all results together and an answer will be given to the main
research question. In the following figure is depicted which elements are included in each stage and
how these elements follow up.
Figure 11: Research framework
25
4 Results and Analysis This chapter will describe the results gathered from the survey. These results will be connected to the
current business model of Nature Today, to see in which segments the platform needs to improve for
a sustainable and future-proof business model. In the analysis part, answers will be given to the
drafted research questions. The first chapter will use the Business Model Canvas to picture the current
business model of Nature Today. Multiple survey question were assigned to each canvas element to
further explore the possibilities of that element. These questions will show the business model
innovation for Nature Today. In the end a new version of the business model canvas will be presented.
This new version represents the favorable situation where Nature Today should grow to, to have a
future-proof business model.
4.1 Business Model Canvas of Nature Today The literature review already explained the use of the Business Model Canvas (BMC) developed by
Osterwalder and Pigneur (2010). The canvas helps businesses like Nature Today to define their values
and actions. For each element in the canvas an analysis was done on the current situation. A summary
of this analysis can be found in Figure 12, which describes the business model of Nature Today before
the insights of the survey. In this chapter the results from the survey are presented for each BMC
element, analyzed and a conclusion is drawn what these insights mean for the future of Nature Today.
For this analysis all survey questions were assigned to a certain BMC element. The exact division of
question was presented in the methodology section. Through an analysis of the website and
conversations with the owner of the platform, Arnold van Vliet, the current business model was
created.
Figure 12: Business Model Canvas of Nature Today before survey
Each BMC element has certain characteristics assigned. In this chapter each element is discussed
separately and suggestions for improvement are made from survey outcomes. This analysis starts with
a value proposition: what is it about the ‘product’ Nature Today offers that creates value for their
customers. It is known that the platform is popular under nature lovers, but which topics are most
relevant and what kind of value they attract from these topics is not yet known.
26
4.1.1 Value proposition
The value proposition is the core element of each business. It contains a company’s competitive
advantage, where they are able to create value for their customers in the areas where market
competitors are falling short in capturing that value. There are nine elements that have an influence
on the value proposition: newness, performance, customization, design, brand name, price, cost- and
risk reduction, usability and accessibility. When these nine elements would be combined in one value
proposition for Nature Today it would look like: To daily present nature news from multiple nature
organizations, in an attractive online environment to a large group of nature lovers.
The value proposition is related to the customer segments, also referred to ‘the public’ in the
introduction. The questions to answer are which products and services add value to the customer, how
do these products relieve a client’s ‘pain’ and which ‘gains’ do they provide to the customer. The
current value proposition comes very close to the mission and vision of Nature Today: “continuously
and actively inform the public and specific target groups on topical developments in nature people, so
they will become more connected with nature, they will get more knowledge on nature, they will better
appreciate nature and they will be more motivated to contribute to monitoring, management and
preservation of nature”. This vision can be linked to three survey questions:
- Why do you visit Nature Today.com?
- Are you involved in nature monitoring activities?
- Are you involved in activities related to nature management and - preservation?
The answers to the question about reasons to visit Nature Today were:
1. General interest in nature (85.48%)
2. To stay informed about what happens in nature (78.86%)
3. To increase own knowledge about nature (73.42%)
4. To enlarge knowledge on specific species (42.51%)
5. To follow what nature organizations are doing (33.9%)
Obviously this shows that nature lovers with a preference for up-to-date nature news are attracted to
the website, which can be seen as Nature Today’s target audience. As ‘increasing knowledge’ implies,
the readers are on the website to learn something new. New insights from research leads to new
knowledge, which is in line with the current professional approach to nature news. The ‘general
interest’ that was mentioned shows that the value proposition should focus on general nature lovers,
so that the topics covered are differentiated. In summary, people mainly visit the website because of
their love for nature and the wish to learn more about nature. This connects to the first part of the
vision in about continuously and actively informing the public on topical developments nature.
The second part of the vision is about the appreciation of nature and the wish to stimulate and mobilize
visitors to contribute to nature monitoring, management and preservation. To see whether there is a
link between the two factors (knowledge about nature and being actively involved in nature activities)
several survey questions have to be connected. When the reasons for visiting the Nature Today
website were compared between people who never participate in monitoring activities and those who
do at least once a month, the following results came out:
27
Table 4: Visitors incentives and monitoring activities
Why do you visit Nature Today? Involved in monitoring activities
Not involved in monitoring activities
Average percentage
General interest in nature 85.38% 87.27% 85.98%
To stay informed about what happens in nature 86.02% 68.76% 79.57%
To increase own knowledge about nature 78.19% 67.57% 74.23%
To enlarge knowledge on specific species 49.56% 32.09% 42.61%
To follow what nature organizations are doing 38.26% 27.84% 34.38%
And the results of the comparison between reasons for visiting the Nature Today website and being
involved in nature management or preservation activities is presented in the table below:
Table 5: Visitors incentives and nature management/preservation activities
Why do you visit Nature Today? Involved in nature management or preservation
Not involved in nature management or preservation
Average percentage
General interest in nature 82.86% 88.29% 86.08%
To stay informed about what happens in nature 86.35% 75.27% 79.79%
To increase own knowledge about nature 79.05% 71.23% 74.42%
To enlarge knowledge on specific species 48.57% 38.51% 42.62%
To follow what nature organizations are doing 43.02% 28.23% 34.26%
What can be seen in these tables is the relation between a certain motivation to visit the website and
whether someone is involved in nature activities. The average percentage means the number of people
that have a certain reason for visiting Nature Today. For example in table 5: 86.08% of all people that
answered this question have a general interest in Nature. In that same row, the 82.86% means that of
all people who are involved in nature management or preservation activities, this percentage of people
visits Nature Today because of their general interest in nature. The same reasoning goes for people
who are not involved in these activities.
What is interesting to see is that there is a great similarity between the two tables, which enlarges the
reliability of the outcomes. For both tables the people who visit Nature Today because of their general
interest in nature are more likely to not be involved in nature activities, although these differences are
relatively low. However, for all the other outcomes the results are clearly higher for people who do
participate in nature activities. What can be concluded from this data is that people who come to the
website to learn, either about the latest news or just for specific species are more likely to be involved
in nature activities. This shows there is a correlation between the two items from the vision of Nature
Today: informing the public and motivating them to contribute to nature in monitoring, management
or preservation of nature.
Conclusion of value proposition
The current value proposition is still very relevant for Nature Today. It is there to fulfill the visitors need
to inform themselves with news articles about nature. The reasons for visiting the website show that
they visit because of this proposed value. The results also show that by informing the public with
nature news, they are more likely to be involved in nature activities, which is the second aim of Nature
28
Today. For the future of the platform it is important to keep on delivering up-to-date nature
information and keep on trying to really teach the readers something new, as many visitors have the
aim to gather new knowledge about nature.
4.1.2 Key activities
The key activities are the most important tasks to be done in order to support the described value
proposition. This part analyses the current activities Nature Today carries out and tries to look for
improvements with the answers given in the survey. The key activities might be the most important
element of the BMC, since it shows how Nature Today serves their customers, and sustains the
relationship with them. This is an important basis for a long-term sustainable business model. Nature
Today’s current key activities are shortly described below:
• Coordinating website. The website always has to be up-to-date by publishing new articles on
a daily basis to remain attractive for visitors.
• Keeping contact with content providers. The website can only run smoothly when content
partners deliver news articles on a regular basis.
• Social media. The social media channels should be up-to-date.
• Ensure quality. All articles that are delivered by content providers have to be checked for
spelling and quality.
• Looking for new partnerships – New partnerships like content providers could improve the
quality of the website as it increases the topical developments in nature that are represented.
• Financing the platform. Nature Today was set up with a subsidy from the government, but is
now dependent on their own resources. One of the key activities at the moment is to look for
revenue streams to secure future existence of the platform.
These activities are valued well by the visitors. On the question what should be improved about the
website, the majority of the answers is that nothing should be changed. However, answers to multiple
other questions do show opportunities for Nature Today. These opportunities come from the active
participation of the readers in nature activities. A total of 86.9% of the visitors are found in nature at
least once a week. Also the majority (73,5%) is involved in voluntary jobs related to nature. The
following table shows activities done by the visitors and shows why these activities create
opportunities for new activities:
Table 6: Volunteer work done by visitors of Nature Today
Volunteer work Percentage involved
Observations 51.78%
Nature management 24.47%
Nature guide 22.59%
Systematic observations 17.46%
Board nature organization 14.39%
Giving lectures 13.27%
Nature education 9.01%
What this shows is that within Nature Today’s network there is a lot of available knowledge about
nature. Another question asked about the willingness to be informed about nature activities from
content partners. With a total of 61.1% answering positively, this shows there is a large willingness of
people to be informed or even participate in nature activities. At this moment Nature Today is already
a connector of nature news between multiple nature organizations and the public. These results show
that Nature Today also has opportunities to be a connector between nature educators and people who
29
are enthusiastic about nature. As stated in the previous section, the majority of the people wants to
learn more about nature. A need might be fulfilled when they can easily be linked to nature guides
(361 in total who responded) or other lecturers and educators. From the survey question about which
kind of activities people like to be informed about, lectures (48.3% interested), courses (47%) and
monitoring activities (44.7%) were popular. Especially the last activity could be interesting to organize
as this directly influences nature, instead of indirectly through nature news articles. This could also
lead to new revenue streams, something Nature Today is diligently looking for. More of this will be
discussed in the revenue streams section of the BMC.
Improving current activities
The main goal is to inform the public with nature news from multiple different sectors. In the survey
an open question about improving the current range of news articles was asked: Which topics do you
miss on Nature Today? The main answer given was that more news articles about nature management
and nature preservation need to be published. This answer can be linked to three other questions in
the survey: which existing nature observations, nature management and nature policy topics would
you like to read more about on Nature Today? The three most important answers given per topic were:
Table 7: Most interesting nature observations, management and policy topics
Topics
Nature observations 1. Recognizing species (61.3%) 2. Results of former observation projects (56.6%) 3. Current observation projects (37.6%)
Nature management 1. Latest insights in nature management (75.3%) 2. Influence of management projects on nature (73.5%) 3. Successful nature management projects (72.2%)
Nature policy 1. Developments in national nature policies (63.2%) 2. Developments in regional nature policies (58.3%) 3. Development in European nature policies (55.7%)
These high percentages show that there is a large interest in the coverage of these topics. This would
mean two things for the activities of Nature Today: they should either communicate with their current
partner about the range of topics they address in their news articles and to include articles about
nature observations, nature management or nature policies (with a preference for the described
topics). The other solution would be to look for partnerships with nature organizations that have a
political or nature management background to address these topics more systematically.
International nature news
During the discussions with Arnold van Vliet, it was clear that he had some ideas about expanding the
products and services of Nature Today. It might even be considered a necessity for creating a more
sustainable business model. Currently Nature Today is highly focused on national nature news, but has
the ambition to scale up. The name change from Natuurbericht.nl to Nature Today was partly done to
be prepared for internationalizing the news articles. In this research people have been asked about
their opinions on foreign news articles. The main reason for scaling up is to reach a larger public with
the website, which would mean that the news articles would be written in English. The opinions on
this are divided: 47.3% would read English article, while 29% would not. The other 23.7% is still in
doubt. However, the survey response about possible topics for international nature received over 900
open answers, which shows that international nature news is something that people have an opinion
about. The following table summarizes the answers given for this question:
30
Table 8: Which topics about international nature news would you like to read about?
Nature topic Times mentioned
Birds 134
Climate 92
Nature management & nature policy 92
Europe 69
Nature reserves 67
Plants 44
Comparable topics to what NT offers now 37
Research 31
Butterflies 29
Dutch border areas 25
Mammals 24
Endangered species 24
Forests/trees 22
Discovery of new species 21
Insects 21
Migration 20
No interest in international nature news 107
These are the most popular topics if Nature Today would decide to publish international news articles.
For a future BMC this is important because they will need to look for new international partnership
who are willing to publish stories on the Nature Today website. What is interesting to see from several
answers, is that most answers can be related to Dutch nature. A substantial amount of people write
that international nature news articles are only relevant for them when there is a link with Dutch
nature. For birds this is the case for the species who leave the Netherlands during the winter and
readers want to know more about their migration patterns (which is a category on itself) and the areas
they are hibernating. Climate change is a subject that has a direct impact on the Dutch national
environment and species that appear in Dutch nature. European nature policy and management could
affect Dutch nature conservation, for example with new policies for national nature reserves. To
summarize the answers given: the international news articles should be about special and rare type of
species that are found abroad or there should be a direct link to Dutch natural areas or policies to meet
the current customer’s needs. For the key activities this would mean that international bird
organizations, foreign climate institutions and European nature policy makers should be contacted for
partnerships.
Webinars
Another extra activity that was suggested by Arnold van Vliet was to introduce webinars. A survey
questions was directed to the interest in webinars and more specifically which topics. The overall
response was positive with only 15.2% not interested in webinars. In this question four topics
suggested are popular by the visitors:
1. Recognizing plants and animal species (60.6%)
2. Striking developments in nature (58.6%)
3. Interesting nature areas (50.7%)
4. Different ecological processes (45.7%)
31
Implementing webinars in the key activities would mean that Nature Today has to approach specialists
from different nature fields to lecture about their knowledge. Also they will have to invest in
technologies that support the creation of webinars. A live webinar might need extra technologies than
a webinar which can be viewed back at any time. Also adding this activity would create a new possibility
for a revenue stream. This will also be discussed in the revenue streams section of the BMC.
Conclusion of key activities
The current set of activities will have to be expanded for a more sustainable business model. This could
be done by improving the current products and services offered, mainly by publishing about nature
monitoring/observations, nature management or nature policies. Or to expand internationally and
create partnerships with foreign nature organizations and arrange them to write news articles about
foreign or international topics. What also can be done is broaden the set of activities. In this section is
argued that organizing nature activities like guided tours, lectures or courses is something that the
current visitors seem to be excited about. Also introducing webinars would be a new activity that
visitors responded to in a positive way. Both activities would also bear financial opportunities, which
makes them even more interesting for Nature Today and for long-term survival of the platform.
4.1.3 Key resources
To reach the value proposition a company needs resources, these resources can be seen as the main
assets to reach a company’s goal. Different departments within companies might even require
different resources. These resources are needed to create the value proposition, to serve customer
segments and to deliver the product or service to the customer. In that way the quality of the resources
has a direct impact on the client and ultimately on the revenues, which needs to be known to create a
sustainable business model. The enumeration below shows which key resources are currently
employed by Nature Today:
• Professional researchers. The quality of research where the news articles are based on,
are directly linked to the quality of the website. The intellectual capital of content
providers and Nature Today editors defines the key resource that Nature Today offers.
• Partnerships with multiple research organizations. The more specialized an organization
is, the more knowledge they have in-house to do proper research about these type of
species. These partnerships makes sure that nature organizations will publish articles
every once in a while.
• Nature information collection. One website for different topical developments in Nature
where multiple nature disciplines are gathered, making it interesting for the average
nature lover as well as the people interested in specific nature topics.
• Brand name. With a large visitors’ base the brand name of Nature Today has a reliable and
professional connection, making the platform stronger.
• Observations list. Nature Today offers a tool to notify new observations and contains an
overview of the other observations done.
This research has created a first new key resource: user data. Although some basic information was
already known about the visitors, this research increased that knowledge to the visitors’ interest, their
daily life activities and demographic statistics. This will be useful for improvement of the platform by
adjusting it to the visitors’ wishes and needs. Concerning the existing key resources, obviously the most
important key resources are the news articles that are published daily on the platform. Although there
are multiple species that organizations report on, it was not yet clear were the specific interests per
topic were among the visitors. In the table below an overview is given of all categories that can be
found on the website and what the interests of the readers are:
32
Table 9: About which categories do you prefer to read news articles?
Category % of interested visitors
Birds 71.4%
Butterflies 57.9%
Mammals 56.2%
Plants 53%
Insects 46.8%
Dragonflies 42.5%
Amphibians/reptiles 41.7%
Mushrooms 37.4%
Climate 35.8%
Beach & Sea 25.1%
Fish 24.6%
Opinion 17.6%
Caribbean 5%
This enumeration of most popular topics is useful for the development of the platform for the future.
Nature Today should identify which specific organizations publish on which days and about which
topics. They could get more satisfied customers if the topics of birds, butterflies, mammals and plants
would significantly come back more often than other topics. It might also be interesting for
approaching new partnerships. It shows that a large part of the visitors likes birds, which is an
interesting target audience for bird organizations who are net yet a partner of Nature Today. In the
revenue stream section will also be discussed in which ways partner organizations could become new
sources of income. However, these results might be influenced by the fact that some organizations
already publish more often on Nature Today. This means that a part of the readers might visit the
platform just for these topics, which influences some outcomes positively and others negatively.
Observations
One of the described resources, which is currently limited developed, is the observations’ list on the
website. In the survey only 4.4% of the people who do observations, pass these observations through
the Nature Today website (only 2.8% if all visitors would be included). From the previous section we
concluded that the majority of visitors (51.8%) does observations as voluntary work, while even 64%
of all visitors does at least do nature observations a few times a year. In another question many of
these ‘observers’ (77.4%) indicates that Nature Today helps them with doing the observations: mainly
by notifying them which species they should watch out for and how to recognize different species.
Although many visitors are involved in nature observations, they do not find the way to the Nature
Today website. This shows an underdeveloped potential for the platform. If they would focus on the
opportunity to easily pass through their findings on the platform, and support these opportunities with
related observation news articles they might be able to mobilize many visitors. The four most
interesting observation news articles, as indicated by the visitors:
1. Recognizing species (61.3%),
2. Results of former observation projects (56.6%),
3. Current observation projects (37.6%)
4. How to do nature observations (34.3%)
If these subjects would be increasingly integrated in the website, this would have two major benefits.
The first one is that Nature Today could mobilize a larger group of people to be actively involved in
33
nature observations and monitoring, which is part of the vision. The second one is that they would
have a large backbone to collect relevant data for research. This would make Nature Today an even
more interesting partner.
Finally, what can be seen as a key resource is the design of the platform. The survey results show that
the visitors are very satisfied with the current design: only 3.1% stated that they would like to see
improvements. These improvements are mainly about the lay-out structure, so it is clear what the
most recent news articles are. Although this is something that might need to change, the vast majority
is already satisfied with the current design.
Conclusion key resources
The current resources are highly valued by the visitors, with only a small part of the people feeling the
need for improvements in topics covered or in platform design. The first improvement could come
from a better division of topics that are published on the platform. The visitors have clear preferences
for certain subjects: it would increase satisfaction if news articles about these topics are published
more often. Secondly, the results show that a currently underdeveloped item in the website, the
observations, should gain more attention. The number of people already involved in observation and
monitoring activities is large and preferences for news articles on this topic are known. This could lead
to more volunteers for data gathering as well as it helps to make more people enthusiastic about these
nature activities.
4.1.4 Customer relationship
The value proposition, the key activities and key resources all try to serve one goal: improve customer
satisfaction. A company needs to be in contact with their customers to be able to deliver products that
meet customer demands. What kind of relationship do the visitors of Nature Today expect from the
platform and how is Nature Today currently serving those needs? How should this relation between
customers and Nature Today be integrated in the business model? The three most important aspects
within customer relationship are customer acquisition (convince people to choose your platform over
other competitors), customer retention (long-term relationship with people) and boosting sales. The
areas in which Nature Today already retains a relationship with their visitors:
• Website. The nature news articles on the website have been the most important way of
gathering a large readers base.
• Social media. Customers are getting used to be informed wherever and whenever they want.
Having social media channels and publishing in different formats for mobile devices answers
customer needs.
Until this research the relationship with the visitors was somewhat one sided. A previous survey
through the website had gained some information on types of visitors, but was not as detailed as this
survey. Before the structure was more top-down, the nature organizations and website owners
decided which topics were presented. With these new insights it is possible to build a more complex
relationship. First of all, customer satisfaction rates could be raised by responding to the customers’
nature topics preferences. If these topics would also be extended to foreign topics, in English, it is
important how your readers feel about such a large change. Important numbers are that 29% of the
readers would not read international news articles, while another 23.7% still doubts whether they
would read these articles. This is a large percentage of the current visitors that might be excluded when
international news articles are introduced. To retain a good relationship with this part of the visitors,
it is recommended to keep on publishing the current Dutch news articles. The English news articles
should not replace Dutch articles, but are an addition to the current website and come from
34
partnerships with international nature organizations. In this way the current visitors still have their
daily Dutch news articles and international visitors and half of the current visitors have extra news
articles to read.
From the survey we can see that the visitors of the website are really loyal. The majority of the people
(51.3%) visits the website daily. On a distance followed by once a week (19.2%) and a few times a week
(17.4%). This shows that the people who already know Nature Today, are likely to be loyal visitors.
However, these results might be somewhat biased because fanatic visitors are more likely to have filled
in this survey. From earlier results it is known that the majority of the people (61.1%) have an interest
in being informed about nature activities organized by content partners. This offers opportunities to
increase the customer relation to a relation with physical activities organized by Nature Today. While
this connection at this moment is purely digital, a physical relationship with activities in nature also
seems to be a logical next step to implement. Popular physical activities are attending lecture (48.3%),
courses (47%), national open days (46.9%) and monitoring activities (44.7%).
From the literature we have seen that people are more willing to get customized products. What we
can see is that the most popular answer given about activities from nature organizations, is to be
informed if a certain nature organization publishes a new article. This is directly related to a
customization option for Nature Today. Other related changes could be to change the webpage design
or to select a certain topic to only read news articles about that certain topic.
Conclusion customer relationship
The current relationship between Nature Today and the customer has been top-down, but with the
survey insights new possibilities and input have been delivered to diversify that relationship. A
suggestion for international nature news is to not forget about the loyal reader base that prefers Dutch
news articles, while also international news articles offers potential. Also offering customization
options on the platform could increase the loyalty to the website. Finally, a physical relationship seems
to be a logical next step. This would take the website from being a platform to becoming more of an
economic nature ecosystem like described in the literature of Weill & Woerner (2015). This ecosystem
would require partnerships with complementary product and services providers, so the product range
offered can be extended by organizing activities like lectures, courses and excursions. Ultimately, this
leads to a network of partners, the ecosystem, who try to achieve active involvement in – and
education about – nature.
4.1.5 Channels
The channels a company uses are the most important ways to reach customers and are of major
importance to create a strong relationship with them. Nature Today needs to know on which channels
their users are active, so they can more easily target these groups with their news articles. On the
other hand customers have a preference how they want to be approached, which requires specific
skills from Nature Today to use these channels effectively. This should lead to a strategy in which the
most cost-efficient channels are used to reach those customers, while these channels should also be
able to reach potential new customers.
Currently there are five distribution channels through which Nature Today’s news articles are spread:
Website, email newsletter, Facebook page, Twitter and a mobile app. The website is the basis of all
the visits, on average 66000 unique visitors a month. The email newsletter can be delivered on a daily
or weekly basis and is currently received by 13000 users, for half of the receivers on a daily basis and
the other half weekly. The Facebook account has close to 2250 followers and the Twitter account has
13300 (October 2017). According to Google Play store the App is downloaded over 1000 times. The
35
survey has made clear which social media channels are used by users for daily use, gathering nature
information, sharing nature articles and through which channels they would like to be informed by
Nature Today. All different channels could help in attracting more visitors to the website. In the survey
a question was assigned to identify the channels through which they first heard of Nature Today. Table
8 gives a representation of these answers:
Table 10: How did you discover Nature Today?
How did you discover NT? Percentage
Via a content partner of NT 26%
Friends/relatives 19.2%
Through websites 13.5%
Search engines (Google/Bing/Yahoo) 8.3%
Facebook 2%
Television/newspaper/radio 1.1%
Twitter 0.8%
I don’t remember 18.8%
These results show that most people find their way to the website through the content partners. This
might be an opportunity or a stimulus to create a larger basis of content partners. Interesting to see is
that social media and traditional media are very unpopular channels to gather new visitors. In another
question was answered that 41.1% of the people is active on Facebook and 12.5% on Twitter, these
are significantly higher percentages than presented in the table. This shows that Nature Today should
invest more time in their social media strategy, if they want to gather new visitors. This is even more
supported by the fact that 52.4% of the visitors shares nature news through social media. This creates
an enormous potential for reaching new nature enthusiastic people. Other social media channels are
Instagram (7.4%) and snapchat (1.3%). Although not many of the current visitors might be reached
through these channels, they might attract different customer segments. Finally, search engines have
not been popular channels to reach new customers. This could also imply that the current search
engine strategy is underdeveloped and needs improvement.
To create an improved communication strategy for a new business model, the survey question about
how visitors want to be reached was included. Table 11 shows the outcomes:
Table 11: How do you want to be informed by Nature Today?
How do you want to be informed? Percentage
Email newsletter 68.9%
Website 55.6%
Nature Today App 19.6%
Facebook 15%
Twitter 5%
Instagram 2%
Snapchat 0.3%
These outcomes show that the most popular channel to be informed is the email newsletter, even
more than the website. However, these two cannot be seen separately from each other. In the
newsletter a small introduction is given for a certain article, but when a reader wants access to the
whole article a link leads them to the website. This probably means that the majority uses the email
newsletter as a distribution basis for their nature news, instead of first visiting the website in their
36
browser. With a large reader base, this creates opportunities for new revenue streams with
advertisements or links to the web shop in the email newsletter.
App
Nearly 20 per cent would like to be informed via the Nature Today app, while only 9.2% percent of the
visitors indicated that they have this app installed. This means that people do not find a way to the app
and Nature Today needs to improve the promotion for the application. Another reason for this is that
mobile applications offer new opportunities for advertisement streams, although this should not come
at the expense of website visitors. This will be explained in the revenue streams section. Interesting to
see is that the amount of people willing to be informed by Facebook is three times higher than through
Twitter, while we have described that the Twitter account has over eight times more followers. This
again indicates that the current Facebook strategy is underdeveloped and has potential role in
informing the current visitor group.
Conclusion channels
Although Nature Today reaches a lot of visitors through multiple channels, the full potential of certain
channels is not utilized. In a future business model, more attention should be paid to a proper social
media strategy. People have shown to be active on those platforms and willing to share nature
information there, what could reach new nature lovers. Although the content partners have brought
new visitors to the site, if Nature Today is able to reach more collaborations with other partner
organizations the current reader base would increase again.
4.1.6 Customer segments
The customers might be the most important element of the business model canvas, as it shows which
groups of people you are targeting as a platform. For Nature Today this means they should identify the
type of visitors they want to serve and how to do so by analyzing their specific needs. These customer
segments can be identified by demographic characteristics as well as on motivational grounds like
interests and motivations. From this segmentation it should be clear which type of visitors is most
important to target for Nature Today. Currently Nature Today targets the following segments:
• Nature lovers. This group is a large market, because nature lovers come from all different
consumer types and different demographic backgrounds.
• Work-related visitors. A part of the visitors have interests in Nature Todays articles for
work purposes.
• Journalists. For Nature Today it is important to reach the media to inform a growing group
of people about topical development in nature. This is done through journalists and Nature
Today anticipates on this by creating a special module for journalists which enables them
to create news articles relevant for different media channels.
• Nature organizations. The website also creates value for nature organization that reach a
larger public with their news articles then if they would publish these articles themselves.
The survey has given in-depth information in demographic characteristics. We know that the average
is particularly high: 58.7 years old. Unsurprisingly, 38.5 per cent of the visitors is retired. Furthermore
the average person is highly educated: 76.1% has at least finished a HBO study. The following figure
shows the age distribution of Nature Today:
37
Figure 13: age distribution of Nature Today’s visitors
What is striking to see is that Nature Today does not seem to reach people under the age of 45. From
the survey we can analyze whether this group has significant other interests in nature topics or if they
are reached through different channels. The data shows that there is no direct correlation between
interests in certain topics and age. Only around the topics of mushrooms and plants people with higher
age seem to be more interested. What this shows is that it is not possible to reach new target groups
by focusing on other nature topics. Concerning the use of media, there were some useful insights. In
the following table an overview is given for each age group – divided into an age gap of ten years – and
their sources for nature information. This gives an insight in the relationship between age and the
sources where people gather their nature information from.
Table 12: Age group and nature information source
News Source Age group ↓
Na-ture Today
TV News-paper & maga-zins
Re-search publications
Nature organizations
Books Apps Visitor center
Lec-tures
Internet
0-29 years (72 total)
92.0 37.8 55.4 60.8 48.7 74.3 20.3 5.4 36.5 46.0
30-39 years (77 total)
89.6 42.9 63.6 67.5 62.3 75.3 35.1 18.2 35.1 49.4
40-49 years (148 total)
90.5 45.3 61.5 52.7 66.2 73.0 27.0 18.2 29.1 46.0
50-59 years (365 total)
86.0 44.9 59.7 42.5 73.7 72.1 27.7 23.8 33.4 51.2
60-69 years (543 total)
88.0 40.5 57.3 39.6 72.7 72.7 20.3 25.2 33.2 51.9
70-79 years (259 total)
84.9 46.7 57.1 34.4 73.0 64.1 12.7 18.2 27.4 46.3
80-older (34 total)
75.5 35.3 52.9 41.2 67.7 52.9 5.9 20.6 14.7 41.2
* Answers in percentage of age group using these news sources
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
Age distribution Nature Today's visitors
38
From this table can be seen that in the age groups 50 – 59 and 60 – 69 are representing over 60 percent
of the total group. If we would add all the total percentages for each age group we can see that people
in the age of 30-39 are using the most different sources to gather their nature information. Interesting
to see is that the youngest group, under the age of 30, are using as many information sources as people
from the age group 70-79.
Other trends between age groups and the type of information sources can be seen in newspapers &
magazines, research publications and apps, where we can see an overall negative trend corresponding
with the age of the users. At the age of 30 – 39 years old this reaches the highest percentage of users,
with slowly declining percentages for every older age group. The youngest age group is not really
connected with this trend, as they score somewhat lower in percentage then the age group 30 - 39,
but this could be explained by the age range used. This also includes readers under the age of 20, for
who it might be less likely to read newspapers or read scientific articles. On the other hand we can see
a slightly positive trend between older people and the likeliness of being members of a nature
organizations or to go to visitor centers as an information source. What this data shows is that to
attract younger people, under the age of 50, Nature Today should focus its communication towards
newspapers and magazines, research publications and mobile apps. Especially the last item is
something that is already in use, but underdeveloped.
The question that was answered for age, could also be answered for gender. From the data is known
that 67.7% of the visitors is man, leaving 32.3% women. When comparing their characteristics, we can
see that women significantly have no preference for certain topics, the only topics they are not
interested in are fish and the Caribbean. They are slightly more interested in beach and sea topics and
plants. However, these preferences are minimal and a strategy to attract more women to the platform
by focusing on news articles on those topics is not likely to be successful.
Conclusion on customer segments
If an average person on Nature Today has to be characterized it would be a male of 59 years old, who
is highly educated. To attract women, or younger people or lower educated people, it is hard to set up
a strategy from the survey data. Although the youth seems to be easier to reach through
magazines/newspapers, research publications or mobile applications, they cannot be attracted by
focusing on specific nature topics. For women these results are similar, they have a slight preference
for plants or beach and sea topics, but not significant enough to make this a strategy. The average
education level might have something to do with the high quality and level of the news articles. If these
would be more accessible, this could attract new target audience. However, the data could not explain
the relation between education level and the visitors, it could also be the case that higher educated
people are more generally more interested in nature. Recommended for Nature Today is to pay
attention to the quality of the news articles, instead of targeting different user groups.
4.1.7 Key partners
Partnerships can help companies to outperform competitors. For Nature Today it is important to identify which partners are most important in bringing the platform to a higher level, what kind of resources Nature Today gets from these partners and in which activities those key partners are involved. The following key partners can be identified:
• Content partners. Research institutes, NGO’s and universities write articles for the Nature
Today website on a regular basis to share their knowledge about topical developments within
their specialty. They invest time in translating this knowledge into readable news articles.
39
• ICT developers. When developing a website or a mobile application specific ICT knowledge is
needed to create a working and well performing platform. Technical competencies are
needed, which should eventually lead to an user friendly digital platform where visitors are
attracted to come back to. The current ICT developer for Nature Today is e-vision.
The current list of partners of Nature Today is: ARK Natuurontwikkeling, Atlas Leefomgeving, Atlas
Natuurlijk kapitaal, BLWG, De Vlinderstichting, EIS Kenniscentrum Insecten, FLORON, GLOBE, Natuurlijk
Limburg, Nederlandse Mycologische Vereniging, N100-KNAW, Provincie Gelderland, SoortenNL,
Stichting ANEMOON, Stichting RAVON, Stichting voor Duurzame Ontwikkeling, Vogelbescherming
Nederland, Werkgroep Grauwe Kiekendief and Zoogdiervereniging. Research institutes like
Wageningen University also share knowledge from research summarized in news articles. Other
organizations like the Centraal Bureau Statistiek, citizen science research project ‘Natuurkalender’ and
Muggenradar help Nature Today by keeping databases up-to-date or with financial support.
From earlier presented results we concluded that nature organizations do deliver news articles on a
regular basis, but also bring new visitors. The list of partners is already quite large, but from the data
collected about memberships of nature organizations we can see with quite some organizations there
is no collaboration yet. The table below gives insight in the memberships of readers:
Table 13: Percentage of visitors that are member of a nature organization
Nature organization Percentage
Natuurmonumenten 46.6%
Vogelbescherming 40.8%
IVN 21.6%
Greenpeace 20.9%
KNNV 19.5%
Wereld Natuur Fonds 18.3%
SOVON Vogelonderzoek 14.9%
Vlinderstichting 13.7%
Milieudefensie 10.6%
Other 34.6%
At this moment only the Vlinderstichting and Vogelbescherming are partners of Nature Today, whereas
SOVON published frequently on the platform until last year and Natuurmonumenten still publishes
every few months. From previous results we have analyzed that one of the main reasons to visit Nature
Today is to follow what nature organizations are doing. Furthermore, we have seen that visitors mainly
got in touch with the platform through other nature organizations. What this means is that
partnerships, especially with the above mentioned organizations, would raise visitors satisfaction as
well as the number of visitors. Although Nature Today already tries to collaborate with multiple
organizations, this research emphasizes that these collaborations are one of the key factors of success
for the platform and establishing relationships should be one of the key activities. Finally, IVN is known
for their education to nature guides. A collaboration could also be a step into organizing nature tours
through nature today. These kind of ties could also be established with other nature organizations.
A third of the answers given were about organizations not mentioned in the survey. An analysis has
been made about these ‘other organizations’. The outcome was that these organizations could be
classified into five different categories:
40
1. Specified nature organizations (for a certain type of species) – mentioned 176 times
2. Regional organizations – mentioned 172 times
3. Natuurpunt Belgium – mentioned 150 times
4. Local organizations – mentioned 63 times
5. Belgian nature organizations – mentioned 47 times
Although Natuurpunt is also a Belgian based organization, it was mentioned so often
(10% of total responses) that an extra category was created. Natuurpunt is a nature based website
from Vlaanderen that shows similarities with Nature Today. Their main goal is to protect the vulnerable
and endangered nature areas in Vlaanderen. They also publish nature news articles about research
done in the 500 nature areas they are working in. Nature lovers can become member and participate
in different activities like guided tours, courses in nature, sporting activities or volunteering. With this
portfolio they could be seen as a competitor of Nature Today, although they currently are only
targeting Belgian nature. Their organization as a whole provides interesting similarities to the
outcomes of this research. Not only in their differentiated product range, but also in their multiple
revenue streams. One of their goals is to protect nature, which fits the vision of Nature Today. An
collaboration between the Natuurpunt and Nature Today could have benefits for both parties: For
Nature Today the knowledge about how to organize nature activities and how to gather more revenue
streams. On the other hand Nature Today can offer more specialized knowledge with news articles.
Conclusion key partners
For a digital platform like Nature Today partnerships determine how successful and influential the
platform is. From the data presented earlier and the insights in the current visitors memberships it can
be concluded that more nature organizations as partners could lead to more satisfied readers and
increasing numbers of visitors. The list of memberships shows which national partners are interesting
to collaborate with. From the key activities section we have also seen that international bird, climate
and nature management/policy organizations are interesting potential partners. A very similar
platform to Nature Today is the Belgian Natuurpunt.be. The results from this survey direct Nature
Today towards a comparable platform as their Belgian counterpart. A collaboration between the two
could benefit both parties.
4.1.8 Cost structure
The cost structure describes which parts of the business model bring certain costs. These costs can be
related to key resources or key activities. Some of which are variable costs and others fixed. Some costs
are relatively less costly when produced on a larger scale. The following enumeration contains the
products and processes that generate costs for Nature Today:
• Website maintenance. When there are technological problems or the website has to be
updated to improve meeting customer’s needs, this should be done by people with ICT
knowledge.
• Opportunity costs. Keeping the website up-to-date is time consuming. Because the
website is maintained by top biologists, this means that the time invested in the website,
or invested in translating research results into news articles, cannot be invested in other
research or education time.
• Hosting costs. Hiring the domain NatureToday.com brings fixed yearly costs.
Conclusion cost structure
The results from the survey are not connected to the costs made by Nature Today, which makes it hard
to conclude from this canvas element. What can be concluded is that the technological basis for the
41
platform, the fixed costs, will always exist. A growing platform would relatively lower the average costs
to maintain the website. However, this does require extra time in quality insurance of the news articles.
In earlier results it was also suggested to improve the mobile application and the social media strategy.
These would lead to higher opportunity costs as well.
4.1.9 Revenue streams
Contrary to the costs, a company has certain ways to create value that leads to revenues. Not only
current revenue streams are important, also future revenue should be described. This section first
describes the income Nature Today currently receives and will analyze the effectiveness of these
streams. Secondly, this chapter will elaborate on the possibilities for new revenue streams that were
identified from survey results. In the introduction chapter was stated that digital content providers
have failed to find different revenue streams, making them vulnerable and dependent on
advertisement incomes. That is why the described revenue streams can be seen as the basis for a
future-proof and sustainable business model. Currently Nature Today has the following revenue
streams:
• Advertisement income. The largest part of the income comes from advertisements on the
website. These are implemented in the form of banners and get more profitable the more
people click on them. Currently these advertisements come from Google Adsense, while other
advertisement methods like sponsored content is not yet used. These advertisements yield
around 200 – 300 euro’s a month.
• Web shop income. On the website there is a link to a web shop were nature products can be
bought. When someone visits one of these web shops through a click on Nature Todays
website, a certain percentage (around 10 percent) of the price of products sold will go to
Nature Today.
• Financers/subsidies: A current financial partner of Nature Today is the Prins Bernard
Cultuurfonds, an organization that subsidizes cultural, nature related and scientific initiatives.
From the survey we can confirm that advertisement strategy is not very effective, because only 15,8%
of the visitors is aware of these banners and actively clicks on them. A total of 40,4% does not even
see the advertisement and they are likely to use advertisement blockers. This shows the necessity of
gathering new revenue sources. For this moment these advertisement still make profits, so it would
be unnecessary to delete them. As presented earlier, the email newsletter is send to a large reader
base and also there is a potential for more users of the mobile applications. These are two options
where advertisements can easily be implemented. It will not create enough revenue to finance the
whole platform, but do offer a stable part of income.
For the second current revenue stream, the web shop, the survey results were rather promising.
Although the current amount of people buying stuff from this web shop is limited, only 33.7% indicated
in the survey that they are not interested in buying products from the web shop. This means that the
other 66.3% has already visited the web shop (23.1%) or is willing to visit it in the future (43.2%).
Improving the web shop thus offers opportunities. To see how these opportunities can be taken, a
question was related to the type of online purchases people make. The following table shows these
product categories:
42
Table 14: What kind of products do you purchase online?
Product category Percentage
Books and magazines 68.3%
Travels, hotels and accommodations 40%
Electronics 28.5%
Clothing 27.2%
Gifts and gadgets 24.8%
Home and garden 22.7%
Hard and software 22.5%
Music and video 20.6%
Pets and animals 12%
Health care 11.2%
I do not make online purchases 16.7%
These outcomes confirm the potential of online shopping, with 83.3% of the people indicating they do
online purchases. These outcomes have two implications for Nature Today. First, more needs to be
done to guide visitors to the web shop, it should gather more attention. This could be done by making
a more visible link on the website itself, or via promotion via the other media channels. Second, the
products offered should connect to the products categories that people buy online stuff for. Especially
nature books and magazines have a great to sell through the web shop. The same applies to the other
top categories in table 14. An improvement would be to create a collaboration with other shops who
sell these nature products and show them the potential selling through Nature Today. This would
create a mutual benefit for these shops as well as for Nature Today.
Subscription model
A more well-known revenue methods from other content providers is a subscription model. Although
Arnold van Vliet stated he is not directly interested in applying such a model, two survey questions
were appointed to this subject. The majority answered (69.2%) that they are not willing to pay for the
news articles. For the people who would not mind to pay, most people (52.2%) are willing to pay
between 6 and 15 euro per year. Taken all answers together from people who are willing to pay, this
resulted in an average of 12,83 euro yearly. If indeed 30.8% would pay that amount of the monthly
66.000 visitors, this would create 260.808 euro a year. However, this is very unlikely. First of all because
the most active readers filled in this survey and they are probably more likely to pay. The percentage
of all people who are willing to pay is probably a lot lower. Also, a large percentage indicated that 12,83
is too much for them and they leave when a paywall is implemented. Most importantly, Nature Today
would lose the largest part of its reader base, which would have a negative impact on both goals
present In Nature Todays vision. Implementing a subscription model is not advised. Some suggestions
from visitors are related to the possibilities of donating to the website. In that way people who feel
connected to the platform and are willing to contribute to the existence have a possibility to do so. A
small banner on the website could lead to an easy extra revenue source.
Publishing fee for content partners
At the start of this research, it was a serious option is to ask nature organizations to pay a certain fee
for publishing on Nature Todays website. This idea was introduced because organizations can profit
from the platform in terms of exposure, gathering volunteers/donors and an increased chance in
getting new jobs from governments or companies. Arnold van Vliet felt like publishing on their
platform offers value to these organizations and they should pay for that. During the research Arnold
43
van Vliet reached an agreement with multiple partners that they pay a yearly fee of 3000 euro which
grants them access to publishing on Nature Today. This agreement offers an important basis for the
creation of a future-proof business model because of the stable revenue streams.
Nature activities
In the section of key activities was already explained that many visitors are actively involved in nature
activities and are willing to be informed about other activities. In this section we reasoned that this
could offer new revenue streams. For example with the many nature guides. Nature Today has a large
network of nature lovers and nature guides are looking for a public to guide. This offers opportunities
for organizing nature trips with specialists. To participate people can subscribe themselves through
Nature Today and pay a certain fee, this fee is partly for Nature Today as a connector and partly for
the nature guide. This connects again to the vision to mobilize people to go into nature. The same
could be done for lectures. Many nature specialists, or specialists on a specific nature topic, can be
approached through the contacts of the platform to share their knowledge. Interested visitors can
subscribe themselves through the website and make small payment to attend or participate. This
strategy could also be applied for webinars, where specialists make a video about a certain topic.
Visitors can view these videos by paying a small fee.
Mobile application
One of the ideas for the future is the creation of mobile application about location based nature
information. Research institutes might be interested in the creation of such app as well, because it
gives them access to more data. If they are willing to become a partner of this application, they have
to pay a certain amount of money. Another idea is to let people pay a certain amount of money to
download to app to gain revenues. Or to sell this application to schools, to use in biology class. The
creation of this app is not free and it should be kept up-to-date which increases workload. That is why
a collaboration with research institutes has to be established to cover those costs. This would lead to
an larger product range of Nature Today, which creates more satisfied visitors and attracts new target
audiences.
Conclusion revenue streams
The current revenue streams from advertisements, the web shop and subsidies is insufficient to keep
the platform running in the long-term. This section shows that multiple new revenue streams can be
created. The advertisement strategy can be expanded to the email newsletter and the mobile
application. The web shop has large potential, but needs to offer new products which match with the
online buying behavior of the visitors. When it comes to new income sources, Nature Today as an
organizer of nature activities has a large potential. Within the visitors there is a large part actively
involved in nature guiding or nature education. By connecting interested public and these nature
teachers together through Nature Today, revenues can be obtained. We would discourage the
platform to put their content behind a paying wall, while a donating button on the home page is
recommended. Finally, during this research an agreement between Nature Today and multiple content
partners has been reached. This is an important step for a future-proof platform.
44
Conclusion
The presented outcomes in the results section have shown which business model elements need
improvement and in which ways these changes have to be implemented by Nature Today. These
improvements have been substantiated with evidence from the survey, which delivered an extensive
insight in Nature Todays visitors wishes and needs. All these changes can be summarized in the same
Business Model Canvas, the new version is presented as figure 14.
Figure 14: New business model canvas for Nature Today
4.2 Analysis of Nature Today’s competitive environment from survey data Competitors are of major importance for the success of a company in a certain sector. With the
increased insights people have with the internet it is now easier to compare company performance,
giving superior companies an advantage. By analyzing the competitive environment, it helps to see in
which sectors Nature Today needs to develop in order to be the leader in their sector or to at least
perform better than direct competitors. Also, in this chapter the analysis focuses on the categories
that the current readers are interested in, and analyzes which other content providers are offering
these topics. Furthermore, the information that is missed on the current Nature Today website could
be offered by other competitors. This can be analyzed with the question from the survey about their
nature information sources, where the visitors get their information from beside the Nature Today
website.
Some of the current content partners can also be competitors. The survey has given insights into which
other nature organizations the readers are subscribed to. As many readers (70.2% in total) have
indicated they also get their nature information from nature organizations, these organizations could
pull away readers from the platform. With this in mind, it is interesting to analyze if there are
organizations which are not current content partners, because partnerships with these organizations
might attract a large group of new readers. And last, the communication division of these nature
organizations can be seen as competitors as well. When Nature Today publishes their content and
45
reaches a larger public than they could by themselves, these organizations might consider their
communication departments as unnecessary.
From the survey results we have seen the main reasons to visit the Nature Today website. These results
show that nature lovers with an interest in the latest developments in nature and specific species are
visiting the website. When looking for direct competitors of Nature Today, these answer make clear
that websites offering new insights from nature, either general news or news about specific species,
are the major competitors because of product similarities. This can be linked to the question where
people get their nature information from in Table 15.
Table 15: Where do you get your nature information from?
Nature information source Percentage
Nature Today 87%
Books 70.5%
Nature organizations membership 70.2%
Newspapers and magazines 58.7%
Internet 48.8%
Television 42.7%
Academic publications 42.2%
Lectures 31.3%
Visitors centers 21.4%
Nature apps 21.3%
What these results show is that, next to Nature Today, books and through nature organizations where
visitors are member of people gather their nature news. When it comes to books, they differ on a few
points significantly from the business model of Nature Today: 1). They are never really up-to-date as
they have to go through a process of editing, rewriting and they have to be pressed. 2). They are not
available online and thus not accessible from multiple locations. 3). They are physical instead of digital.
On the other hand books offer more background information on a specific topic. If Nature Today could
create longer background articles, they might fulfill new visitor’s needs. Also the nature organizations
can be seen both as partners and as competitors. As already reasoned in the key partners section of
the BMC, collaborations with nature partners as content providers is of major importance in reaching
a large public. This will be necessary to ultimately become a nature news leader, first nationally and in
the future internationally. For international nature news coverage this still requires partnerships with
international nature organizations.
For the result of newspapers and magazines: these can offer up-to-date nature information and are
most of the time available through online channels, which make them seem like competitors. On the
other hand it is very unlikely that newspapers are going to create nature news articles by themselves.
There seems to be more of a mutual benefit in a collaboration instead of competing for nature news.
Stronger ties with journalists would be recommended, perhaps by a collaboration in which at least
once a month (or other period) a nature news article is published. This research has already tried to
find out how more nature news could be published, but has not created clear answers. This can be
explained by the low number of journalists that filled in the survey and those who did were already
satisfied with the format and newsworthiness of the articles.
Most interesting to see is from which other internet websites people get their nature information from,
as these are most comparable to Nature Today in terms of content, packaging and infrastructure,
46
which are the three competitive advantages a digital content provider can have. From an analysis done
about these internet websites the following answers were given (table 16):
Table 16: From which website do you get your nature information?
(Type of) Website Times mentioned
Waarneming.nl (observations website) 100
Specific nature organization website 86
Sites for specific species 64
Vroege Vogels (Radio/Television show) 21
Friends/relatives 19
Verspreidingsatlas.nl 17
Wikipedia.com 15
Natuurpunt.be 14
Classes/seminars 14
Google 13
These results confirm the earlier conclusion that visitors have a large interest in nature observations.
Currently this pulls away visitors to other websites like waarneming.nl, but could be implemented by
Nature Today as argued in the key activities section. Another option would be to establish a
collaboration with waarneming.nl in which visitors of Nature Today have insights in observations and
have the possibility to add new observations through the platform. Other large outcomes are related
to smaller and specific species that people are interested in. For the business model of Nature Today
this means that smaller and specific species still deserve attention in news articles, instead of focusing
on the most popular nature topics or species. However, these answers were really diversified and many
news articles would be needed to satisfy this group of readers interested in specific species.
Nature apps
As mentioned earlier in the literature study, the market for mobile apps is booming and the majority
of people is using their mobile phone more to be informed than other platforms (Telegraph, 2015).
Also interesting to see is that an under-represented group, below 50 years, is more likely to use apps,
which could help targeting new audiences to the Nature Today platform. In the survey a question was
related to the use of nature apps by visitors. One of these outcomes was that the current Nature Today
app is only used by 9.15% of the users, while in the previous graph was shown that on average 21.3%
of the people use mobile apps for gathering nature information. If the visitors on a monthly basis would
be 66.000, as described in the introduction, this would mean that just over 14.000 people use apps for
nature information, but only a few thousand downloaded the Nature Today app. If the Nature Today
application would be promoted, this could mean that the total users of this app could be over doubled,
which might pull away visitors from other apps that can be seen as competitors.
Conclusion
The competitive environment of Nature Today is mainly focused on nature content providers
publishing up-to-date nature information on a very regular basis. For the visitors of Nature Today these
are mainly the nature organizations where they are a member of. However, most nature organizations
can profit from the exposure on the Nature Todays platform and can be better identified as partners
then as competitors. The most popular organizations for visitors are Natuurmonumenten,
Vogelbescherming and IVN. Natuurmonumenten already published on the website, but IVN currently
is not a partner, but could be interesting when they decide to organize more nature activities. Another
source where quite some visitors gather nature information from are books and newspapers &
47
magazines. Books are no direct competitors as they cannot be compared in terms of content,
packaging and infrastructure, but show that more in-depth articles on Nature Today has potential. It
also increases the opportunities for the web shop to sell books and magazines. Furthermore, Nature
Today should establish a better connection with journalists to increase the number of nature articles
published in the media. Although journalists indicated to be satisfied with the current platform,
stronger agreements might help to get more nature news published. Finally, the observation websites
are taking away visitors, while previous results have shown this is not necessary. If Nature Today would
build in options in the platform to deliver nature observations and store these observations in a
database, this will lead to more satisfied customers. This could also be created if a partnership with
waarneming.nl would be established.
4.3 Benefits for Nature Today’s content partners This research has studied the internal competencies of Nature Today and the improvements needed
to get to a financially self-sustainable platform. From the key partners analysis was concluded that
content partners are the keys to Nature Todays success and will have an important role in the potential
success for the future. To gather new partnerships, the platform will need a good story to convince
new partners to collaborate. This section aims to answer the research question about the benefits for
nature organizations, NGO’s and research institutes when partnering up with Nature Today. It will also
provide implications for the changing role the current partners will have and the changes Nature Today
should make to mean more for these organizations.
Employers and volunteers
In the introduction was already elaborated upon the potential presence of employers on the platform.
Nature organizations are often employed by governments like municipalities, provinces or the national
government, or by companies interested in certain nature organizations for all different purposes. The
results gave insight in the professional background of the visitors, and shows the potential of linking
content partners to these employers. In total 10.3% of the visitors works at a governmental
organization, most of them locally (36.8%), followed by nationally (29.5%) and on a provincial level
(16.6%). Although this survey did not include questions about how often people working at
governments did provide nature organizations with projects, this data shows that the platform informs
a great number of potential employers for content partners.
As data from the BMC already explained, a large percentage of the visitors engages in nature volunteer
work. Mainly in the fields of nature monitoring, nature management and nature preservation. By
analyzing the websites of the nature organizations, it shows nature organizations are always looking
for new volunteers. With the large number of nature lovers and nature volunteers on the Nature Today
website, it can be seen as an interesting market for content partners. This is supported by the fact that
38.5% of the visitors is retired and does have time to spend. What Nature Today could do to improve
this is link volunteers to the specific projects that nature organizations have. They should pay attention
that this is divided equally between all organizations, or maximize the number of projects that can be
promoted through the platform for each year. For the nature organizations it is recommended to
explain the need for these projects, because the survey shows that people are interested in the effects
of volunteering work on nature and the campaigns that try to influence nature policies and
preservation. Also, volunteers can collect data for research purposes performed by nature
organizations which is a second benefit.
48
Membership
Furthermore, the results show that most people are member of a nature organization, in total 88.7%
of the visitors. From the results of the types of organizations, Natuurmonumenten, Vogelbescherming,
IVN and Greenpeace were most popular. This shows that these organizations can easily reach a large
part of their donors through the platform, satisfying their donors in terms of information needs and
increasing the chance that this group will keep on donating. It also shows the potential for nature
organizations who are not yet a partner that the platform is capable of informing a large group of
nature lovers. By publishing on the platform, brand awareness can be created and potential new
members can be collected. This research has advised to look for nature organizations for international
collaborations, the survey results show great potential for different nature organizations to reach a
new public. Although, bird organizations, Greenpeace, WWF and larger general nature organizations
seem to have the highest potential. These claims are supported by the fact that 52.4% of the readers
shares nature news with their network, which means that the potential spread of the articles reaches
further than the visitors of the website alone.
News article topics
These results have also created a lot of background into the wishes and needs of the readers, which
can directly be translated into interesting news articles by the content partners. Earlier results have
shown that the five most popular species are birds (71.4%), butterflies (57.9%), mammals (56.2%),
plants (53%) and insects (46.8%). General nature organizations could focus more often on these
species when writing news articles. This research also identified the topics that are currently missing
on the platform. The following table provides an overview of these topics:
Table 17: Topics that are currently missing on Nature Today
Nature topic Times mentioned
Nature management/nature policy 33
Nature development 14
Research outcomes 14
Trees/forests 13
(Nature) activities 11
Politics 11
Opinion 10
Water/water animals 10
Foreign countries 10
Although the majority of the readers is already satisfied with the range of topics covered, the largest
potential for news articles is about nature policies, nature monitoring – projects and how to do
observations – and nature management. These are topics that all nature organizations have to deal
with in their daily work and could provide interesting insights for the readers. Another question related
to the international nature topics received attention in this report. These results have shown that there
is an interest in international nature news, but the connection should be clear with the Netherlands.
This could be the case with species that are hibernating in warmer places, about international nature
areas or climate related topics.
Nature activities
Finally, this research recommends to diversify the activities performed by Nature Today. For these
activities the nature organizations play an important role. First of all, most visitors (61.1%) have
49
indicated they would like to be informed by nature activities from content partners. The following
activities are most interesting: new publications by specific nature organizations (67.9%), lectures
(48.3%), courses (47%), national days (46.9%) and nature monitoring activities (44.7%). Nature Today
can function as a social platform where nature lovers and organizers of nature activities are connected.
This would link to Nature Today’s vision about mobilizing people to be actively involved in nature
activities and links to the vision of nature organizations to improve the quality of nature as a whole.
The results also shows the potential of webinars. Nature organizations have a lot of inhouse
knowledge, which could be shared via a webinar through the platform to reach a large group of nature
lovers.
Conclusion
A collaboration between Nature Today and content partners creates multiple mutual benefits. Nature
organizations can reach a larger public with their news articles, leading to brand awareness and
potential new donors. The platform could also function as a connector between nature lovers and the
nature activities organized by content partners. The same goes for the nature volunteers that might
be willing to work on volunteering projects of content partners. Although there has not been
researched for a direct link between bringing in project and publishing on the platform, the number of
people working in governmental organizations does show the potential to do so. Furthermore, the
data that Nature Today collects about the visitors is useful for writing relevant and interesting news
articles. These results show the potential of underdeveloped topics, which might increase the number
of visitors to the platform if content partners would treat these topics more often. The visitors share
nature news often with their network, which means that the potential reach of the platform is beyond
the visitors on the website.
50
5 Conclusion and recommendations Many digital content providers are looking for new revenue streams. These content providers are still
mainly dependent on advertisement incomes, while these incomes are under pressure and are
expected to decrease in the near future. This research has aimed to identify new revenue streams by
innovating the business model of digital content providers. With these revenue streams a financially
self-sustainable platform can be created. For the identification of concrete solution a case study
approach was used. The case of Nature Today, an online digital information platform for nature news,
was used to serve as an example for other online content or information suppliers.
From business model literature the elements of the Business Model Canvas and the definition of Morris
et al. have been used. Combined these stated that a good business model takes eleven elements into
account: value proposition, customer relationship, customer segments, channels, key activities, key
resources, key partnerships, competitors, cost structure, revenue streams and personal factors. Based
on these elements a current situation Business Model Canvas was created. This showed that the
current competitive advantage of Nature Today is the high quality of nature news articles, their
consistency in publishing daily and their network of nature organization that deliver news articles.
Looking at other successful companies, they are organized with a customer-focus. Content is
personalized or customized for specific groups and their platform design and product delivery to the
customer has shown to be important. Data for customers characteristics and motives is used for
constant adaptation of the products, so the products offered fulfill customers wishes and needs.
Considering the competitive environment, the competitor analysis showed that other nature
organizations seem to be the largest competitors as they have comparable competitive advantages in
the form of content, packaging and infrastructure. Also, many visitors indicated they discovered Nature
Today through other nature organizations. However, this research argues that these organizations
should rather be seen as partners than competitors since Nature Today is able to reach a larger range
of nature lovers nationally, more than these organizations could by themselves. A collaboration
between the two would create mutual benefits. The large interest in regional and local organizations
has shown the need for specific and close-to-home nature news. Additionally, the interest in nature
books, newspapers and magazines shows that more in-depth articles about nature is a wish of the
visitors. Offering a slightly different product, nature observations websites are also very popular, which
offers opportunities to create an observation database on the Nature Today platform. From this
competitor analysis could be concluded that Nature Today is market leader in deliver national nature
news, but opportunities are to be taken in in-depth news articles and the possibility of passing through
observations on the platform.
This research has identified the demographic characteristics and motives of visitors of Nature Today.
On average these are 59 years old, two third is man, mainly highly educated visitors and loyal to the
platform. They have a general interest in nature and have the wish to learn more about nature, or
about specific species. They are actively involved in nature activities, mainly observations, work as a
nature guide or are involved in nature preservation activities. Topics that are most attractive to them
are birds, butterflies, mammals and plants. Considering their unfulfilled needs, they prefer news
articles about nature monitoring, observations or preservation and nature activities organized by
content partners. They can be reached through the email newsletter, the website, the Nature Today
app or Facebook. The majority is interested in international nature news, although a large group would
not read English news articles. From the results no strategy towards certain topics use in targeting new
audiences was found, while different age groups could mainly be reached via mobile apps, newspapers
or academic journals.
51
Content partners have an important role in the quality of the platform as well as a function for directing
new visitors to the website. The results also indicated that Nature Today creates benefits for these
content partners in many ways. In connecting nature organizations with possible employers active on
the website and searching for volunteers for their nature projects. In increasing their brand awareness
and the possibility to gather new members from this. In gaining insights in which topics nature lovers
are most interested in and guiding about which topics they should write about. And finally, in
connecting people who like to be in nature to the nature activities that are organized by content
partners. These could be lectures, guided tours, webinars or for their national days. This research has
shown that both parties profit from each other’s input in the collaboration.
To answer the main research question which business model element should be implement by Nature
Today, this research has mentioned several options. This research has delivered a first large data
source on the visitors, which will have to be used to adjust the platform to the visitors wishes and
needs. It highlighted that Nature Todays needs to diversify their key activities to create new revenue
streams. The new revenue streams of improved web shop sales, better placed advertisements,
webinars, nature activities, paying nature organizations, financers/subsidies and gifts/donations will
ultimately lead to a financially self-sustainable platform. The basis that forms this is the agreement
between the platform and content partners to pay a certain fee to publish. The diversified activities
will also have to lead to new partnerships with retail partners, nature activity organizers and
international nature news organizations. This will lead to more nature news articles and more direct
care of nature, both contributing to the vision of Nature Today.
5.1 Recommendations for Nature Today The presented improved business model canvas already shows a summarized version of the
recommendations. In this chapter all the recommendations for Nature Today will be presented, linked
to specific actions. The report has mentioned multiple improvements, these will be summarized in this
section:
News articles. First of all, the news articles should focus more on topics around nature observations,
nature management and nature preservation. Mainly describing the current project that are running
or about successes or failures of finished projects. The main interests of topics is birds, butterflies,
mammals and plants. It is recommended to let these topics return more often. Also more background
stories on these topics is a need that should be fulfilled by the platform. Most importantly, the articles
should remain of high quality and the platform should be consistent in publishing daily. Publishing
about international nature also offers opportunities, and it is recommend to start with topics that still
link with Dutch nature. If this is received well by the readers, internal articles could be expanded by
publishing about birds, climate or European nature management and nature policy topics as these are
indicated as most interesting.
Partnerships. Internationalization requires partnerships with international nature organizations with
specialism about the mentioned topics. The Belgian website Natuurpunt.be could also be seen as a
nature partner, since their goals are similar to the current website. Nature Today could provide more
qualitative news articles, while Natuurpunt could provide the platform with tips on expanding the
number of revenue streams. Furthermore, the web shop can be improved by partnerships with retail
parties. This research analyzed that products that should be offered there are books, magazines and
travel related products. Retail partners offering these products should be approached to sell through
the Nature Today web shop.
Activities. Because of the large numbers of people active in nature activities or as a nature guide, it is
recommended to facilitate these groups with information about nature excursions, lectures, guided
52
tours or other courses. These could be organized by Nature Today themselves, or they could link the
visitors to content partners activities. The first manner could create an extra stream, while the second
one would satisfy content partners and justify the publishing more. A nature activity calendar on the
website would provide a good overview of these activities. The creation of webinars has large potential
and is recommend to be developed. This could be done by Nature Today themselves or by approaching
research specialists about a certain topic.
Platform design. From successful content providers could be seen that platform customization satisfies
users. For Nature Today this could be done giving the opportunity to sort the news articles on a certain
type of species, to only see the text of the news articles in a chronological order or to only see articles
publishes by a certain content partner or writer. Secondly, doing observations is very popular among
the current readers. It is recommend to offer a tool on the platform to hand in these observations.
These could help for research purposes of content partners. Also a partnership with the most popular
observation website waarneming.nl could be established and visitors can get insights in the observed
species on the Nature Today website.
Channels. The current channels to reach users is mainly limited to the website and the email
newsletter. Improving the social media strategy could create more brand awareness for Nature Today
and reach new potential visitors. Readers have indicated to share nature news and with social media
platforms like Facebook, many more persons could be reached. The mobile application is already
developed, but the promotion is limited. Many underrepresented user groups inform themselves
through mobile apps, which makes investing in this channel interesting.
Revenue streams. This research has highlighted multiple extra revenue streams. Advertisement could
be added to the mobile application and the email newsletter. Expansion and extra promotion of the
web shop could increase revenue. Watching webinars can be inserted behind a pay-wall. Organizing
nature activities for a certain fee or for every person that finds an activity of a content partner through
the platform a small fee is paid by these partners. Nature organizations willing to publish on the
platform should pay a publishing fee. Finally, people have indicated to be willing to donate for the
existence of Nature Today, so a donating banner on the website could help. However, implementing a
subscription model for the news articles is not advised.
53
6 Discussion The aim of this research is to provide digital content providers insights in how to improve their business
model to be less dependent on advertisement incomes. This was done by identifying all business model
components and testing these on the case of Nature Today to see how content providers can innovate
their business model. Literature shows that a business model includes a complex set of network
relations and actions between multiple actors in the business environment (Zott et al. 2011). A
business model describes the types of competitive advantages a company owns. For digital content
providers, like Nature Today, these advantages are related to the published content, the customer
experience and the platform design. For this research the business model components of Osterwalder
and Pigneur (2010) and Morris et al. (2005) were combined, leading to eleven elements. To gather new
revenue streams to become financially self-sustainable, this research identified that these revenues
are mainly a result of the key resources a company possesses and the key activities it performs. The
most important key resource is extensive knowledge of the end-customer. From best practices in the
field it was analyzed that successful content providers have a customer-centered focus instead of
product-centered. Thorough knowledge on customers background, wishes and needs shapes the key
activities that will ultimately lead to new or more revenue streams, making companies less dependable
on the declining incomes from advertisements. This research describes that for the case of Nature
Today these activities should be: to widen the news articles to international topics, to create
partnerships with nature organizations internationally or national organizations in the fields of birds,
butterflies, mammals and plants, to partner up with retail partners offering nature products, to start
connecting nature lovers to nature activities, to make customization of the platform possible and to
improve social media strategy to create more brand awareness and attract new people to the platform.
In the theoretical section the four types of business models for online companies by Weill and Woerner
(2015) have been introduced and was argued that the potential of Nature Today to grow towards an
ecosystem driver would be researched. Before this research the platform was placed in the supplier
category as customer knowledge was limited and potential loss of power was high because of their
dependency on content partners and advertisement incomes. The findings have shown great potential
for Nature Today to become a social nature platform, or nature lovers community, which can be linked
to the ecosystem driver business model. Requirement to become such a platform is in-depth
knowledge of the customer what should lead to great customer experience. Also added value for
content providers should be clear. This is the case for Nature Today because through the platform
content partners reach a larger public of nature lovers, the chance of gathering new members
increases, new participants for their nature activities can be found, it enhances the opportunities to
reach potential employers and they gain more insights in the interest of nature lovers which helps in
writing future news articles. With these benefits in mind for content partners, Nature Today justifies
the extraction of publishing fees from their content partners.
The increased popularity of business models in literature is linked to the rise of internet usage, because
companies saw new possibilities for revenue streams. The difference between the online businesses
described in theory and digital content providers, is that the latter lacks a physical product. Theory
indicates that for physical products it is important to perform better than your competitors in your
sector in terms of quality and price. For digital content this is different since much content is freely
available and thus lacks a price. As a result, this research highlighted that working together with your
competitors as partners in an economic ecosystem could create mutual benefits in terms of reaching
more customers, product quality and customer satisfaction – which all together opens possibilities for
new revenue streams. To stay popular as an economic ecosystem, a content provider constantly needs
to develop the platform on all channels where customers are active. This requires periodic researches
54
about customers wishes and needs. Furthermore, this research has shown other digital content
providers how to use business model elements to reflect upon own performances and how to gain
thorough insights on customers. As mentioned, these insights can be seen as the key resource of a
digital content provider and forms the basis for the key activities and the value proposition. It is
necessary for content providers to identify their core business (Weill and Woerner 2015) and create
their product or service better than any other platform could. This will require partnerships with
producers of complementary goods, for Nature Today this goes for retail partners, or with parties that
compete with your product in some ways, in this case the content produced by nature organizations,
NGO’s or research institutes.
The marketing of the content ultimately has to lead to new revenue streams, which connects to the
financial aim of Nature Today; being self-sustainable. Since digital content is homogeneous,
multipliable and intangible, it is hard to sell it as a product. People are used to free information and
even though the results show that visitors of Nature Today are very loyal, the majority would stop
visiting the platform if the content would be behind a pay-wall. This can be explained by the amount
of nature information available through nature organizations themselves, books, newspapers and
magazines or other nature websites. If Nature Today would be able to offer content that cannot be
seen anywhere else, for example in the form of webinars, this would increase the chance of implanting
a successful pay-wall. This could take the form of monthly or yearly subscriptions or pay-per-view. This
relates to the research of Pauwels and Weiss (2008) who indicated that companies that insert a pay-
wall but do not have superior content or set prices higher than the willingness to pay are likely to fail.
The ultimate value that Nature Today offers is their news articles, but this does not create the revenue.
This research has indicated that the mobilization of – and knowledge about the customers can be
turned into revenue sources. The revenue sources identified in this research all connect to the three
monetizing methods for digital content providers by Clemons (2009): selling real thing, virtual things
or selling access. The selling real things offers possibilities for the web shop and for activity organizers.
With information about visitors online purchase behavior Nature Today can approach retailers for a
collaboration to sell their products through the platform. The large user base and proof of potential
sales creates a mutual for both the retailer and Nature Today. The same argument can be applied to
nature activities, which are organized by content partners. The results showed that the visitors have a
need to inform themselves about these activities and are already involved in nature activities
themselves. In this way, the platform has the potential to function as a connector between nature
lovers and nature activity organizers.
What was unexpected to see in the findings was that people aged below 45 barely find their way to
the platform. This research looked at the channels through which this age group is active and their
interests in nature topics to see if the target audience can be expanded outside the older audience. In
terms of topics no relation was found, while the for the channels younger people seem slightly easier
to be reached through mobile applications and research publications. However, it is discussable when
focusing on these channels a wider audience in terms of age can be obtained. Nature seems to be most
attractive to the elderly. Especially the high percentage of retired people show the correlation between
time to spend and the interest in nature. Younger people have busy lives with work obligations, which
influences the time to spend on nature related activities. This suggests that a focus on targeting
younger people is not likely to have much success, because the daily work responsibilities will remain.
It is recommended to focus on the current target group of people aged 50 and over and try to improve
their satisfaction, so more people from these ages are attracted to the platform.
Summarized, for digital content providers offering a product that is qualitative superior is not enough.
It all start with customer knowledge, what their wishes and needs are, what kind of activities they do,
55
through which channels they are active. These insights should lead to diversification of the activities.
If the content does not match with these insights, the revenue streams will not be successful enough
to have a sustainable platform in the long-term. By constantly keeping track of changes in wishes and
needs organization or platform can adapt to the changing preferences of visitors. However, from the
definition of Morris et al. (2005) was distracted that personal factors also have an important influence
on business model success. Especially for Nature Today this is relevant, because the team behind the
platform is small and proposed changes will impact the time and energy spend on the website by the
employees. This might have implications for other activities done next to keeping the platform running
or might lead to less willingness to invest time in the platform, reducing the impact it could have.
Limitations The approach to this research and the process of obtaining results has some limitations that need to
be addressed. First of all, the use of one case study to draw general conclusions for multiple digital
content providers has its flaws (Tellis 1997). Although other researchers have argued that setting
objectives and correct parameters is more important than a large sample size, the outcomes of this
specific case might considerably be different than other cases. To overcome this limitation, this
research aimed to clearly specify all business model elements for the case. With these categorized
elements, also outcomes for each element can be generalized instead of the whole case study (Stake
1978).
The second limitations concerns the response group of the survey. The results showed that over twice
as much responses came from people who receive the daily newsletter of Nature Today, while in total
the number of people receiving this newsletter is equally divided between daily and weekly. The daily
visitors can be considered as more dedicated and enthusiastic visitors of the platform, which might
have caused the results to be more positive than they are in reality. The response group was pretty
homogeneous with a main focus on people between fifty and seventy years and highly educated. An
over representing group influences the results significantly and makes it harder to generalize results
for all age groups. Also, this research aims to improve customer satisfaction, but does so by targeting
the current visitors. This excludes people who have a general interest in nature, but do not yet know
about the existence of the platform. Their motives would have been a valuable addition to results.
The final limitation comes from the interpretation of the data. The design of the survey tried to clusters
answers, excluding answer possibilities or taking away nuance in answers. This could have led to
certain patterns or results that are slightly different in reality. Also the interpretation of qualitative
data was dependent of the researcher and might have been misunderstood or appointed to wrong
categories. Also no statistical analyses were performed on the data, making it difficult to interpret
whether some outcomes can be seen as a relation, correlation or significance of the results. Especially
for the social media strategy and the topics covered these analysis could have been helpful.
Recommendations for further research This research has identified the wishes and needs of the current visitors of the Nature Today platform.
As already mentioned under the limitations, it would be interesting to identify the wishes and needs
of people currently not visiting the website, but with an interest in nature. This could give new insights
in the key activities that Nature Today could do to attract a larger audience. If different age groups or
education level are included in this research, more reliable conclusion could be drawn to attract these
underrepresented groups. Also, this study looked at one case in a specific field to generalize for digital
content providers. It would be interesting to see in another research with a focus on a different case
whether the results are comparable or different. This could improve a general business model for
digital content providers even more.
56
References
Adner, R. and R. Kapoor (2010). "Value creation in innovation ecosystems: How the structure of technological interdependence affects firm performance in new technology generations." Strategic management journal 31(3): 306-333.
Bocken, N. et al. (2013). "A value mapping tool for sustainable business modelling." Corporate Governance 31(5): 482 - 497
Brousseau, E. and T. Penard (2007). "The economics of digital business models: a framework for analyzing the economics of platforms." Review of Network Economics 6(2).
Business Insider. (2013). "BII Report: Why Mobile Commerce Is Set To Explode."
Business Insider. (2016). "U.S. ad block usage expected to more than double by 2020."
Chesbrough, H. (2006). "Open innovation: the new imperative for creating and profiting from technology. Harvard Business School Press, Boston.
Christenson, C. (1997). "The innovator’s dilemma." Harvard Business School Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Clemons, E. K. (2009). "Business models for monetizing internet applications and web sites: Experience, theory, and predictions." Journal of Management Information Systems 26(2): 15-41.
Clickfox (2011). "Mobile Apps Consumer Survey."
Denscombe, M. (1998). "The good research guide for small-scale social science projects." Open university press.
Eaton, J. J. and D. Bawden (1991). "What kind of resource is information?" International journal of information management 11(2): 156-165.
Economist (2009). "The end of the free lunch - again."
EContent (2016). "The top 100 Companies in the Digital Content Industry: The 2016-2017 EContent 100".
Eisenmann, T., et al. (2006). "Strategies for two-sided markets." Harvard business review 84(10): 92.
Eriksson, C., et al. (2008). "Business models for m-services: Exploring the e-newspaper case from a consumer view." Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations (JECO) 6(2): 29-57.
Euchner, J. and Ganguly, A. (2013). "Business model innovation in practice". Journal of Resarch-Technology Management 57(6): 33-39.
Evans, D. S. (2002). "The antitrust economics of two-sided markets." Available at SSRN 332022.
Fotopoulos, V., et al. (2004). Managing intellectual property rights: from products to services. Signal Processing and Information Technology, 2004. Proceedings of the Fourth IEEE International Symposium on, IEEE.
57
Freiden, J., et al. (1998). "Information as a product: not goods, not services." Marketing Intelligence & Planning 16(3): 210-220.
Gawer, A. and M. A. Cusumano (2014). "Industry platforms and ecosystem innovation." Journal of Product Innovation Management 31(3): 417-433.
Gioia, D., et al. (2013). "Seeking qualitative rigor in inductive research. Notes on the Gioia methodology." Academy of Management 16(1): 15-31.
Gomm, R., et al. (2000). "Case study method: Key issues, key text". 19-27.
Koiso-Kanttila, N. (2004). "Digital content marketing: a literature synthesis." Journal of marketing management 20(1-2): 45-65.
Kumar, S. (2011). "A system dynamics analysis of food supply chains - Case study with non-perishable producs". Simulation modelling practice and theory. 19(10): 2151-2168
Lacy, S. (2009). "Online ads: Even the evangelists turning bearish." TechCrunch. com.
Li, S., et al. (2005). "Cross-selling sequentially ordered products: An application to consumer banking services." Journal of Marketing Research 42(2): 233-239.
Magretta, J. (2002). "Why business models matter."
Mäkinen, S. and M. Seppänen (2007). "Assessing business model concepts with taxonomical research criteria: A preliminary study." Management Research News 30(10): 735-748.
Meyer, M. H. and A. P. Lehnerd (1997). "The power of product platforms: building value and cost leadership. ." New York, NY 10020: 39.
Morris, M., et al. (2005). "The entrepreneur's business model: toward a unified perspective." Journal of business research 58(6): 726-735.
Muffatto, M. and M. Roveda (2002). "Product architecture and platforms: a conceptual framework." International Journal of Technology Management 24(1): 1-16.
Osterwalder, A. and Pigneur, Y. (2010). "Business model generation: a handbook for visionaries, game changers and challengers."
Pagefair (2016). "2016 Mobile Adblocking Report."
Pagefair (2017). "2017 Adblock Report."
Pauwels, K. and A. Weiss (2008). "Moving from free to fee: How online firms market to change their business model successfully." Journal of Marketing 72(3): 14-31.
Pine, B. J. (1993). Mass customization: the new frontier in business competition, Harvard Business Press.
Porter, M. E. (1985). "Competitive advantage: creating and sustaining superior performance. 1985." New York: FreePress.
Porter, M. E. (1996). "What is strategy?" Published November.
58
Rangan, S. and R. Adner (2001). "Profits and the Internet: Seven misconceptions." MIT Sloan Management Review 42(4): 44.
Reichheld, F. F., et al. (2000). "The loyalty effect-the relationship between loyalty and profits." European Business Journal 12(3): 134.
Ries, A. and L. Ries (2000). The 11 immutable laws of internet branding, HarperInformation.
Rogers, E. M. and F. F. Shoemaker (1971). "Communication of Innovations; A Cross-Cultural Approach."
Rowley, J. (2004). "What a tangled information brand web we weave." Information services & use 24(2): 73-82.
Rowley, J. (2008). "Understanding digital content marketing." Journal of marketing management 24(5-6): 517-540.
Shapiro, C. and Varian, H. (1999). "The art of standard wars". California Management Review 41(2): 8-23.
Stake, R. (1978). "The Case Stuy Method in Social Inquiry." American Educational Research Association 7(2): 5-8.
Swatman, P. M., et al. (2006). "The changing digital content landscape: An evaluation of e-business model development in European online news and music." Internet Research 16(1): 53-80.
Teece, D. J. (1986). "Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy." Research policy 15(6): 285-305.
Teece, D. J. (2010). "Business models, business strategy and innovation." Long range planning 43(2): 172-194.
Telegraph (2016). "Mobile web usage overtakes desktop for first time".
Tellis, W. (1997). "Application of a case study methodology". Nova southeastern university.
Umeh, J. C. (2007). The World Beyond Digital Rights Management, BCS, The Chartered Institute.
Weill, P. and M. Vitale (2013). Place to space: Migrating to eBusiness Models, Harvard Business Press.
Weill, P. and S. L. Woerner (2013). "Optimizing your digital business model." MIT Sloan Management Review 54(3): 71.
Weill, P. and S. L. Woerner (2015). "Thriving in an increasingly digital ecosystem." MIT Sloan Management Review 56(4): 27.
Zott, C., et al. (2011). "The business model: recent developments and future research." Journal of management 37(4): 1019-1042.
59
Appendix 1 – Survey questions
Enquête Nature Today
Welkom bij deze enquête van en over Nature Today. Nature Today is in 2008 opgericht als
Natuurbericht.nl en heeft sindsdien verschillende veranderingen ondergaan. Een zeer opvallende
verandering was de overgang naar Nature Today en de nieuwe website ongeveer een jaar geleden, het
uiterlijk van Nature Today is toen sterk veranderd. Om Nature Today verder te verbeteren en om meer
aan te sluiten bij uw wensen en behoeften nodigen wij u uit deze enquête in te vullen. Het invullen
duurt ongeveer … minuten. Alvast hartelijk bedankt!
1). Wat is uw geslacht?
□ Man
□ Vrouw
2). Wat is uw leeftijd?
…….. jaar (drop down menu met leeftijden)
3). Wat zijn de eerste vier cijfers van uw postcode?
□ Groningen
□ Friesland
□ Drenthe
□ Overijssel
□ Flevoland
□ Noord-Holland
□ Zuid-Holland
□ Utrecht
□ Gelderland
□ Limburg
□ Noord-Brabant
□ Zeeland
□ Ik woon in het buitenland, namelijk in … (drop down menu met landsnamen)
4). Wat is uw hoogst genoten opleiding?
□ Geen
□ Basisonderwijs
□ LBO/VMBO
□ HAVO/VWO
□ MBO
□ HBO
□ WO
5). Wat is uw gezinssituatie?
□ Alleenstaand
□ Alleenstaand met kinderen
□ Samenwonend zonder kinderen
□ Samenwonend met kinderen
60
6). Bij wat voor organisatie bent u werkzaam?
□ Non-profit natuurorganisatie
□ Universiteit/ kennisinstelling
□ Overheid
□ Groen bureau
□ Commercieel bedrijf
□ Zorginstelling
□ Agrarische onderneming
□ Media
□ Student/leerling
□ ZZP
□ Gepensioneerd
□ Werkzoekend
□ Geen
□ Overige, nl:
6a) Indien overheid: Bij welk type overheidsinstelling werkt u?
□ Landelijke overheid □ Provinciale overheid □ Lokale overheid □ Waterschap □ Rijkswaterstaat □ Staatsbosbeheer
6b1) Indien media: Voor welk type media werkt u?
□ Krant □ Internet □ Radio □ TV
6b2) Op welke schaal werkt u: □ Internationaal □ Nationaal □ Regionaal □ Lokaal
6b3) Bent u opgenomen in de media-database van Nature Today zodat u persberichten toegestuurd krijgt? □ Ja □ Nee ( bent u geïnteresseerd om notificaties te ontvangen?) □ Weet ik niet
6b4) Wat zou de nieuwswaardigheid van de natuurberichten op Nature Today kunnen vergroten? (open vragen)
6b5) Wat zou Nature Today kunnen doen om meer natuurberichten in het nieuws te krijgen?
6b6) Wat maakt het moeilijk om natuurnieuws geplaatst te krijgen?
61
6c) Indien student/leerling: Op welke manier gebruikt u de informatie van Nature Today voor uw opleiding?
7). Doet u vrijwilligerswerk op gebied van natuur?
□ Ik doe waarnemingen □ Ik controleer waarnemingen □ Ik ben natuurgids □ Ik help bij onderwijs □ Ik help bij natuurbeheersactiviteiten □ Ik geef lezingen □ Nee, ik doe geen vrijwilligerswerk op gebied van natuur □ Anders, namelijk…
8). Waarom bezoekt u Nature Today (meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)?
□ Algemene interesse in natuur □ Eigen kennis over natuur te vergroten □ Soortenkennis te vergroten □ Op de hoogte blijven van de laatste ontwikkelingen in de natuur □ Volgen wat natuurorganisaties doen □ Te laten verwonderen over de natuur □ Om beter te kunnen genieten van de natuur □ Werkstuk maken (voor school) □ Voor informatie over natuuractiviteiten □ Voor mooie foto’s over de natuur □ Voor specifieke schrijvers □ Anders, namelijk…
9). Hoe vaak bezoekt u Nature Today?
□ Meerdere keren per dag □ (Bijna) dagelijks □ Meerdere keren per week □ Eén keer per week □ Meerdere keren per maand □ Minder dan één keer per maand
10). Welk deel van de dag bezoekt u de Nature Today website?
□ In de ochtend □ In de middag □ In de avond □ Meerdere delen van de dag □ Niet één specifiek dagdeel
11). Hoe lang bent u al een bezoeker van de NatureToday.com en voorheen Natuurbericht.nl?
□ Sinds een paar weken □ Sinds een paar maanden □ Sinds een jaar □ Tussen de 1 en 3 jaar □ Tussen 3 en 5 jaar □ 5 jaar of langer
62
12). Hoe weet u van het bestaan van Nature Today? □ Via zoekmachines zoals Google/Bing/Yahoo □ Via televisie, kranten of radio □ Via een natuurorganisatie die berichten plaatst op Nature Today □ Facebook □ Twitter □ Via vrienden/bekenden □ Ik weet het niet □ Anders, namelijk…
13). Over welke categorie(ën) leest u het liefst natuurberichten?
□ Amfibieën & Reptielen □ Caraïben □ Insecten □ Libellen □ Paddenstoelen □ Planten □ Strand & Zee □ Vissen □ Vlinders □ Vogels □ Zoogdieren □ Klimaat □ Opinie □ Geen voorkeur
14). Welke categorieën mist u nog op Nature Today? (Open vraag - Mogelijkheid creëren om niets in te vullen) 15). Wat vindt u over het algemeen van de lengte van natuurberichten?
□ Veel te kort □ Enigszins te kort □ Goed □ Enigszins te lang □ Veel te lang
16). Wat vindt u over het algemeen van het inhoudelijke niveau van de natuurberichten?
□ Veel te laag □ Enigszins te laag □ Goed □ Enigszins te hoog □ Veel te hoog
17). Wat vindt u over het algemeen van het taalgebruik van natuurberichten?
□ Veel te makkelijk □ Enigszins te makkelijk □ Goed □ Enigszins te moeilijk □ Veel te moeilijk
63
18). Hoe vaak bent u in de natuur te vinden?
□ Iedere dag
□ Twee/drie keer per week
□ Eén keer per week
□ Eén keer per twee weken
□ Eén keer per maand
□ Minder dan één keer per maand.
19). Als u in de natuur bent, met wie bent u daar dan?
□ Alleen
□ Samen met partner
□ Samen met kinderen
□ Samen met vrienden/bekenden
20). Als u in de natuur bent, welke activiteiten onderneemt u het liefst in de natuur?
□ Wandelen
□ Hardlopen
□ Fietsen
□ Fotograferen
□ Natuurwaarnemingen doen
□ Vissen
□ Tuinieren
□ Anders, namelijk…
21). Waar haalt u verder nog uw natuurinformatie vandaan? □ Televisie □ Kranten en tijdschriften □ Van natuurorganisaties waarvan ik lid ben □ Boeken □ Apps □ Nergens anders □ Anders, namelijk…
22). Welke natuurapps bezit en/of gebruikt u op dit moment?
□ Natuurmonumenten (Bijvoorbeeld: natuurroutes) □ Vogelapps (Bijvoorbeeld: Vogels van Europa) □ Natuur in Nederland □ Wandelapps □ Fietsapps □ ObSMapp □ NatureToday App □ Anders, namelijk… □ Geen
23). Van welke organisatie(s) bent u lid/donateur?
□ Dierenbescherming □ EIS Nederland □ Greenpeace □ FLORON
64
□ International Fund for Animal Welfare (NL) □ IVN □ KNNV □ LandschappenNL □ Milieudefensie □ Natuurmonumenten □ Nederlandse Mycologische Vereniging □ Proefdiervrij □ RAVON □ SOVON Vogelonderzoek □ Stichting AAP □ Stichting Anemoon □ Vlinderstichting □ Vogelbescherming □ Waddenvereniging □ Wereld Natuur Fonds □ World Animal Protection Nederland □ Zoogdiervereniging □ Anders, namelijk… □ Geen
24). Wat voor informatie over natuur in het buitenland zou u interessant vinden om te lezen op Nature Today? (open vraag) 25). Zou u natuurberichten over natuur in het buitenland lezen als ze alleen in het Engels beschikbaar zouden zijn?
□ Ja □ Nee □ Misschien
26). Zou u interesse hebben in deelname aan (natuur)activiteiten, georganiseerd door de organisaties die berichten schrijven op de website van Nature Today?
□ Ja, van specifieke organisaties □ Ja, van alle organisaties ben ik hierin geïnteresseerd □ Nee, ik heb hierin geen interesse
26a) Indien Ja. Over welke activiteiten zou geïnformeerd willen worden?
□ Lezingen □ Nieuwe publicaties □ Landelijke dagen □ Monitoringsactiviteiten □ Cursussen □ Anders, namelijk…
27). Bent u geabonneerd op de nieuwsbrief van Nature Today?
□ Ja, ik ontvang de nieuwsbrief dagelijks □ Ja, ik ontvang de nieuwsbrief wekelijks □ Nee, ik wist niet dat er een nieuwsbrief bestond □ Nee, ik heb geen behoefte aan de nieuwsbrief
65
28). Zou u bereid zijn een bedrag te betalen voor het lezen van de natuurberichten van Nature Today?
□ Ja □ Ja, mits er een aantal zaken worden toegevoegd of veranderd □ Ja, maar alleen aan een specifieke organisatie □ Ja, als daardoor de reclame op de website wel verdwijnt □ Nee, maar ik zou andere opties (meer reclame) wel toestaan □ Nee
28a). Indien Ja: Op welke manier zou u een bijdrage willen leveren?
□ Eenmalige donatie van bedrag □ Maandelijkse bijdrage □ Jaarlijkse bijdrage □ Zeer kleine bijdrage per te lezen artikel □ Bedrag voor een specifieke organisatie
28b). Indien Ja, mits er een aantal zaken worden toegevoegd of veranderd Wat zou er aan natuurberichten of aan Nature Today moeten worden toegevoegd of veranderd? (Open vraag)
Een deel van de inkomsten van Nature Today komt van advertenties. Deze advertenties bevinden zich in de vorm van banners op de website en worden winstgevender naarmate meer bezoekers hierop klikken. 29). Bent u zich bewust van de advertenties op de website van Nature Today?
o Ja, en ik klik er af en toe ook op. o Ja, maar ik scrol er altijd langs. o Nee, ik ben me daar niet van bewust o Nee, ik zie geen advertenties op de website.
Nature Today heeft ook een webshop. Een percentage van het aankoopbedrag van de artikelen die worden verkocht via de website, gaan naar Nature Today. 30). Hebt u weleens gekeken naar de webshop op de website van Nature Today?
o Ja, en ik koop er regelmatig spullen o Ja, en ik heb er ooit weleens wat gekocht o Ja, maar ik heb er nog nooit wat gekocht o Nee, ik ben daarmee niet bekend o Nee, ik ben daarin niet geïnteresseerd
Natuurmonitoring
31). Hoe vaak geeft u natuurwaarnemingen door? □ Dagelijks □ Een aantal keren per week
□ Eén keer per week □ Aantal keren per maand □ Minder dan één keer per maand □ Nooit
66
31a) Indien Ja: Van welke soortgroepen geeft u waarnemingen door?
□ Bomen, struiken en (bloeiende) planten
□ Mossen en korstmossen
□ Algen en kranswieren
□ Paddenstoelen en schimmels
□ Zoogdieren
□ Vogels
□ Vissen
□ Amfibieën en reptielen
□ Vlinder en libellen
□ Overige insecten en andere ongewervelden
□ Anders, nl:
31b) Op welke manier geeft u weleens waarnemingen door?
□ Via waarneming.nl
□ Via telmee.nl
□ Via de websites van soortenorganisaties
□ Via telprojecten (bijv. meetnetten of de jaarrond tuintelling)
□ Niet
□ Anders, namelijk: ….
31c) Heeft u weleens waarnemingen doorgegeven aan De Natuurkalender of Muggenradar via de waarnemingenformulieren op Nature Today? □ Ja, voor De Natuurkalender □ Ja, voor de Muggenradar □ Nee
31d) Op welke manier helpt de informatie op Nature Today u met het doen van
waarnemingen?
□ Attenderen op waar op dat moment gelet moet worden
□ Herkenning van soorten
□ Attenderen op bestaan van waarnemingsprojecten
□ Belang van monitoring verduidelijken
□ Instructie hoe waarnemingen gedaan moeten worden
□ Motiveren om waarnemingen in te sturen
□ Identificeren van interessante gebieden om waarnemingen te doen
□ Anders, namelijk…
32). Bent u geïnteresseerd in berichten over een van de volgende onderwerpen?
□ Waarnemingsprojecten
□ Herkennen van soorten
□ Resultaten van waarnemingsprojecten
□ Hoe natuurwaarnemingen het beste gedaan kunnen worden
67
□ Methoden en technieken om waarnemingen te analyseren
□ Innovaties om waarnemingen te doen
□ Geen interesse in bovenstaande onderwerpen
Natuurbeleid
33). Bent u geïnteresseerd in berichten over een van de volgende onderwerpen?
□ Politieke ontwikkelingen op gebied van natuur
□ Ontwikkelingen in provinciaal natuurbeleid
□ Ontwikkelingen in nationaal natuurbeleid
□ Ontwikkelingen in Europees natuurbeleid
□ Campagnes/projecten/initiatieven die natuurbeleid proberen te beïnvloeden
□ Geen interesse in bovenstaande onderwerpen
Natuurbeheer
34). Bent u geïnteresseerd in berichten over een van de volgende onderwerpen?
□ Succesvolle maatregelen/projecten op gebied van natuurbeheer
□ Invloed van beheer op natuur
□ Nieuwe inzichten op gebied van natuurbeheer
□ Uitdagingen op gebied van natuurbeheer
□ Invloed van natuurwaarnemingen op natuurbeheer
□ Geen interesse in bovenstaande onderwerpen
35) Bent u betrokken bij natuurbeheer en -beleid activiteiten?
□ Ja
□ Nee
35a) Indien ja: Hoe bent u betrokken bij natuurbeheer en -beleid?
□ Inrichting
□ Onderhoud
□ Planning
□ Handhaving
□ Vergunningverlening
□ Monitoring
□ Evaluatie
□ Natuurontwikkeling
□ Agrarisch natuurbeheer
□ Exoten
□ Overig
35b) Hoe goed weet u welke organisaties expertise hebben op het gebied van beheer en
beleid?
68
35c) Weet u wie u bij de organisaties moet benaderen als u vragen heeft over
natuurbeheer en –beleid?
Webinars zijn video’s over een bepaald natuuronderwerp waarin een specialist uitleg geeft. In deze video’s wordt dieper ingegaan op een bepaald natuurfenomeen, diersoort of plantensoort. 36). Bent u geïnteresseerd in het bekijken van een webinar over onderstaande onderwerpen?
□ Herkenning van planten- en diersoorten □ Uitleg over hoe je het beste natuurwaarnemingen kunt doen □ Onderzoeksresultaten □ Opvallende ontwikkelingen in de natuur □ Onderwerpen over natuurbeleid □ Functionaliteiten van Nature Today □ Interessante natuurgebieden □ Diverse ecologische processen □ Ik heb geen interesse in het bekijken van webinars □ Anders namelijk…
37). Wat zou voor u Nature Today nog meer verbeteren?
□ Locatie gebonden natuurinformatie □ Notificaties over natuurnieuws in de omgeving □ Geattendeerd worden op nieuwe publicaties van bepaalde organisaties □ Geattendeerd worden op nieuwe publicaties van bepaalde auteurs □ Meer verhalen □ Zelf de site in te kunnen richten naar eigen wensen □ Meer artikelen over internationale natuur □ Informatie over specifieke natuurgebieden □ Informatie over activiteiten en evenementen over natuur (activiteitenkalender) □ Informatie over activiteiten en evenementen in de natuur (activiteitenkalender) □ Geen mening □ Anders, namelijk…
38). Op welke sociale media bent u actief?
□ Facebook □ Twitter □ Instagram □ Snapchat □ Whatsapp □ Anders, namelijk… □ Geen
38a) Indien ergens actief Deelt u weleens natuurberichten via sociale media?
□ Ja □ Nee
39). Via welke mediakanalen zou u graag door Nature Today geïnformeerd worden?
□ Website □ Nature Today app □ Facebook □ Twitter □ Instagram □ Snapchat
69
□ Emailnieuwsbrief □ Anders namelijk...
40). Hoe overzichtelijk vindt u de website van Nature Today?
□ Zeer overzichtelijk □ Redelijk overzichtelijk □ Neutraal □ Redelijk onoverzichtelijk □ Zeer onoverzichtelijk
40a). (Bij onoverzichtelijk) Waar zijn volgens u nog verbeterpunten mogelijk?
41). Heeft u Nature Today weleens aanbevolen of onder de aandacht gebracht bij vrienden of bekenden?
□ Ja, ik doe dit regelmatig □ Ja, ik heb dit een enkele keer gedaan □ Nee, ik heb dit nog nooit gedaan
42). Heeft u nog algemene aanbevelingen om Nature Today te verbeteren?
70
Appendix 2 – AtlasTI
Figure 15: Names of codes, how often used, used in which groups
Figure 16: Examples of coded text
71
Figure 17: All questions that were coded including number of quotations per question
Figure 18: Example of codetree from Atlas Ti
72
Codes used: Activiteiten, actualiteit, afval opruimen, App Nature Today, bedreigde diersoorten, Belgische lezers, Belgische natuurorganisaties, bijen, biodiversiteit, bodemdieren, bomen/bossen, buitenland, collega, cursus, ecologie, educatie, eigen gebruik, eigen tuin, enquête gerelateerd, Europa, exoten, Facebook, foto’s, geen onderwerpen, geen verbeterpunten, geologie, geschiedenis, gespecialiseerde soortensites, Google, grensgebieden, heelal, honden, insecten, internet, IVN, jagen, klimaat, lay-out, libellen, lokale natuurorganisatie, meer verdieping, mens en natuur, microbiologie, migratie, mossen, natuurbeheer/natuurbeleid, natuurbericht.nl, natuurcentrum, natuurgebieden, natuurgids, natuurkalender, natuurontwikkeling, natuurpunt.be, nieuwsbrief, nooit bezocht, Noord- en Zuidpool, onbekend, onderzoek, ontdekking soortengroepen, opinie, paarden, paddenstoelen, planten, politiek, reclame, regenwoud, regionale natuurorganisaties, reptielen/amfibieën, rewilding, slakken, specifieke natuurorganisatie, specifieke onderwerpen, specifieke soortengroepen, sporten overig, tekstkwaliteit, Twitter, vakbladen, vergelijkbare onderwerpen, verspreidingsatlas, vlinders, vogels, vrienden/kennissen, vrijwilligerswerk, vroege vogels, Waarneming.nl, waarnemingen, Wageningen Universiteit, water/waterdieren, werk gerelateerd, Wikipedia, zoekfunctie, zoogdieren.
Table 18: Codes used in coding qualitative data
73
Appendix 3 – Survey results
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Algemene interesse in natuur
1460 85.48%
2 Om eigen kennis over natuur te vergroten
1254 73.42%
3 Om soortenkennis te vergroten
726 42.51%
4 Om op de hoogte blijven van de laatste ontwikkelingen in de natuur
1347 78.86%
5 Om te volgen wat natuurorganisaties doen
579 33.90%
6 Om me te laten verwonderen over de natuur
555 32.49%
7 Om beter te kunnen genieten van de natuur
372 21.78%
8 Om een werkstuk te maken (voor school)
7 0.41%
9 Voor informatie over natuuractiviteiten
208 12.18%
10 Voor mooie foto's over natuur
259 15.16%
11 Voor specifieke schrijvers
22 1.29%
12 Anders, namelijk:
71 4.16%
Total 6860 100.00%
Website Nature Today
Waarom bezoekt u NatureToday.com?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
74
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Meerdere keren per dag 58 3.40%
2 (Bijna) dagelijks 875 51.29%
3 Meerdere keren per week 297 17.41%
4 Eén keer per week 327 19.17%
5 Meerdere keren per maand 93 5.45%
6 Minder dan één keer per maand 56 3.28%
Total 1706 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Via zoekmachines zoals Google/Bing/Yahoo 141 8.26%
2 Via televisie, kranten of radio 18 1.06%
3 Via websites 231 13.54%
4 Via een natuurorganisatie die berichten plaatst op Nature Today 444 26.03%
5 Facebook 34 1.99%
6 Twitter 14 0.82%
7 Via vrienden/bekenden 328 19.23%
8 Ik weet het niet 320 18.76%
9 Anders, namelijk: 176 10.32%
Total 1706 100.00%
Hoe vaak bezoekt u NatureToday.com?
Hoe weet u van het bestaan van Nature Today?
75
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Amfibieën & reptielen
712 41.71%
2 Caraïben
86 5.04%
3 Insecten
799 46.81%
4 Libellen
725 42.47%
5 Paddenstoelen
638 37.38%
6 Planten
905 53.02%
7 Strand & Zee
429 25.13%
8 Vissen
420 24.60%
9 Vlinders
988 57.88%
10 Vogels
1218 71.35%
11 Zoogdieren
960 56.24%
12 Klimaat
611 35.79%
13 Opinie
301 17.63%
14 Geen voorkeur
273 15.99%
Total 9065 100.00%
Over welke categorie(ën) leest u het liefst natuurberichten?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
76
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Zeer overzichtelijk
689 40.77%
2 Redelijk overzichtelijk
747 44.20%
3 Neutraal
202 11.95%
4 Redelijk onoverzichtelijk
37 2.19%
5 Zeer onoverzichtelijk
15 0.89%
Total 1690 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Ja
790 47.31%
2 Nee
485 29.04%
3 Misschien
395 23.65%
Total 1670 100.00%
Hoe overzichtelijk vindt u de website van Nature Today?
Zou u natuurberichten over natuur in het buitenland lezen als ze alleen in het Engels beschikbaar zouden zijn?
77
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Ja
1019 61.09%
2 Nee
649 38.91%
Total 1668 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Lezingen
487 48.27%
2 Nieuwe publicaties
685 67.89%
3 Landelijke dagen
473 46.88%
4 Monitoringsactiviteiten
451 44.70%
5 Cursussen
474 46.98%
6 Anders, namelijk:
68 6.74%
Total 2638 100.00%
Zou u via NatureToday.com geïnformeerd willen worden over (natuur)activiteiten, georganiseerd door de organisaties die berichten schrijven op NatureToday.com?
Over welke activiteiten zou geïnformeerd willen worden? (Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
78
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Ik doe niet mee aan speciale activiteiten
223 34.79%
2 Ik gebruik andere kanalen om hierover geïnformeerd te worden
306 47.74%
3 Anders, namelijk:
112 17.47%
Total 641 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Ja, ik ontvang de nieuwsbrief dagelijks
884 53.03%
2 Ja, ik ontvang de nieuwsbrief wekelijks
418 25.07%
3 Nee, ik wist niet dat er een nieuwsbrief bestond
182 10.92%
4 Nee, ik heb geen behoefte aan de nieuwsbrief
183 10.98%
Total 1667 100.00%
Waarom wilt u niet over deze activiteiten geïnformeerd worden?
Bent u geabonneerd op de nieuwsbrief van Nature Today?
79
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Ja, en ik klik er af en toe ook op
257 15.83%
2 Ja, maar ik scrol er altijd langs
711 43.78%
3 Nee, ik ben me daar niet van bewust
515 31.71%
4 Nee, ik zie geen advertenties op de website
141 8.68%
Total 1624 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Ja, en ik heb er ooit weleens wat via gekocht
25 1.54%
2 Ja, maar ik heb er nog nooit wat via gekocht
351 21.57%
3 Nee, maar ik ben wel geïnteresseerd om de webshop eens te bezoeken
703 43.21%
4 Nee, en ik ben er niet in geïnteresseerd
548 33.68%
Financieel
Een deel van de inkomsten van Nature Today komt van advertenties. Deze advertenties bevinden zich in de vorm van banners op de website en leveren meer op naarmate meer bezoekers hierop klikken.
Bent u zich bewust van de advertenties op de website van Nature Today?
Nature Today heeft ook een webshop. Een percentage van het aankoopbedrag van de artikelen die worden gekocht via een doorklik vanuit de webshop van NatureToday.com gaat naar Nature Today.
Bent u bekend met de webshop op NatureToday.com?
80
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Boeken en tijdschriften
1096 68.29%
2 Cadeaus en gadgets
398 24.80%
3 Kleding
437 27.23%
4 Eten en drinken
117 7.29%
5 Elektronica en witgoed
458 28.54%
6 Hard- en software
361 22.49%
7 Reizen en hotels/accommodaties
642 40.00%
8 Huis en tuin
364 22.68%
9 Huisdieren/hobbydieren
193 12.02%
10 Telecommunicatie
247 15.39%
11 Muziek en video
330 20.56%
12 Gezondheid en verzorging
179 11.15%
13 Dating
13 0.81%
14 Financiële producten
65 4.05%
15 Anders, nl..
48 2.99%
16 Ik doe nooit online aankopen
268 16.70%
Voor welke van onderstaande productcategorieën doet u wel eens online/mobiel aankopen?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
81
Page Break
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Ja
495 30.84%
2 Nee
1110 69.16%
Total 1605 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 1 tot 5 euro
96 19.71%
2 6 tot 15 euro
254 52.16%
3 16 tot 25 euro
115 23.61%
4 26 tot 50 euro
20 4.11%
5 51 tot 100 euro
1 0.21%
6 Meer dan 100 euro
1 0.21%
Total 487 100.00%
Zou u bereid zijn een financiële bijdrage te geven aan Nature Today om het in stand te houden?
Hoeveel zou u bereid zijn om jaarlijks te doneren?
82
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Non-profit natuurorganisatie 313 19.49%
2 Universiteit/kennisinstelling
75 4.67%
3 Overheid
165 10.27%
4 Groen bureau
61 3.80%
5 Commercieel bedrijf
167 10.40%
6 Zorginstelling
65 4.05%
7 Agrarische onderneming
27 1.68%
8 Media/journalistiek
27 1.68%
10 Student/leerling
37 2.30%
11 ZZP
78 4.86%
12 Gepensioneerd
619 38.54%
13 Werkzoekend
52 3.24%
14 Geen
128 7.97%
15 Anders, namelijk:
178 11.08%
16 Onderwijs (HBO, MBO, middelbaar onderwijs, basisonderwijs)
106 6.60%
Total 2098 100.00%
Werk en interesses
Bij wat voor organisatie(s) bent u werkzaam?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
83
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Landelijke overheid
48 29.45%
2 Provinciale overheid
27 16.56%
3 Lokale overheid
60 36.81%
4 Waterschap
13 7.98%
5 Rijkswaterstaat
2 1.23%
6 Staatsbosbeheer
5 3.07%
7 Anders, namelijk:
23 14.11%
Total 178 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Krant 11 42.31%
2 Weekblad/maandblad 12 46.15%
3 Internet 13 50.00%
4 Radio 2 7.69%
5 TV 4 15.38%
Total 42 100.00%
Bij welk type overheidsinstelling bent u werkzaam?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
Voor welk type media werkt u?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
84
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Internationaal
4 15.38%
2 Nationaal
17 65.38%
3 Regionaal
8 30.77%
4 Lokaal
2 7.69%
Total 31 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Ja
2 7.41%
2 Nee
19 70.37%
3 Weet ik niet
6 22.22%
Total 27 100.00%
Op welke schaal werkt u?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
Bent u opgenomen in de mediadatabase van Nature Today zodat u persberichten toegestuurd krijgt?
85
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Ik doe waarnemingen
827 51.75%
2 Ik controleer waarnemingen
97 6.07%
3 Ik doe systematische tellingen (MAS, BMP, watervogels)
279 17.46%
4 Ik ben natuurgids
361 22.59%
5 Ik help bij onderwijs
144 9.01%
6 Ik help bij natuurbeheeractiviteiten
391 24.47%
7 Ik geef lezingen
212 13.27%
8 Ik zit in het bestuur van een natuurorganisatie
230 14.39%
9 Anders, namelijk:
230 14.39%
10 Nee, ik doe geen vrijwilligerswerk op het gebied van natuur
424 26.53%
Total 3195 100.00%
Natuurbeleving
Welk vrijwilligerswerk doet u op het gebied van natuur?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
86
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Iedere dag 375 23.39%
2 Twee/drie keer per week 685 42.73%
3 Eén keer per week 333 20.77%
4 Eén keer per twee weken 119 7.42%
5 Eén keer per maand 50 3.12%
6 Minder dan één keer per maand 41 2.56%
Total 1603 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Wandelen 1348 84.14%
2 Hardlopen 148 9.24%
3 Fietsen 705 44.01%
4 Fotograferen 796 49.69%
5 Natuurwaarnemingen doen 981 61.24%
6 Systematische monitoring 293 18.29%
7 Vogels kijken 987 61.61%
8 Vissen 59 3.68%
9 Duiken 38 2.37%
10 Tuinieren 631 39.39%
11 Anders, namelijk: 183 11.42%
Total 6169 100.00%
Hoe vaak bent u in de natuur te vinden?
Als u in de natuur bent, welke activiteiten onderneemt u dan?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
87
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Nature Today
1397 86.99%
2 Televisie
685 42.65%
3 Kranten en tijdschriften
942 58.66%
4 Wetenschappelijke publicaties
677 42.15%
5 Van natuurorganisaties waarvan ik lid ben
1127 70.17%
6 Boeken
1132 70.49%
7 Apps
342 21.30%
8 Bezoekerscentra
343 21.36%
9 Lezingen
500 31.13%
10 Internet, via website(s):
783 48.75%
11 Anders, namelijk:
112 6.97%
12 Nergens anders
13 0.81%
Total 8053 100.00%
Waar haalt u uw natuurinformatie vandaan?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
88
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Natuurmonumenten (bijvoorbeeld: natuurroutes) 279 17.48%
2 Vogelapps 600 37.59%
3 Plantenapps 309 19.36%
4 Insectenapps 197 12.34%
5 Herpetofauna app 145 9.09%
6 Natuur in Nederland 91 5.70%
7 Wandelapps 218 13.66%
8 Fietsapps 150 9.40%
9 ObSMapp/iObs 328 20.55%
10 NatureToday App 146 9.15%
11 Anders, namelijk: 103 6.45%
12 Geen 686 42.98%
Total 3252 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Wadvogels 223 37.48%
2 Tuinvogels 211 35.46%
3 Vogels van Europa 278 46.72%
4 Vogels in Nederland 260 43.70%
5 Anders, namelijk: 97 16.30%
Total 1069 100.00%
Welke natuurapps bezit en/of gebruikt u op dit moment?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
Welke vogelapps gebruikt u?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
89
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Dierenbescherming
123 7.74%
2 EIS Nederland
68 4.28%
3 Greenpeace
332 20.88%
4 FLORON
117 7.36%
5 International Fund for Animal Welfare (NL)
31 1.95%
6 IVN
343 21.57%
7 KNNV
310 19.50%
8 LandschappenNL
271 17.04%
9 Milieudefensie 168 10.57%
10 Natuurmonumenten
741 46.60%
11 Nederlandse Mycologische Vereniging 57 3.58%
12 Proefdiervrij
36 2.26%
13 RAVON
112 7.04%
14 SOVON Vogelonderzoek
237 14.91%
15 Stichting AAP
77 4.84%
16 Stichting Anemoon 16 1.01%
17 Vereniging Nederlands Cultuurlandschap
53 3.33%
18 Vlinderstichting
217 13.65%
19 Vogelbescherming
648 40.75%
20 Waddenvereniging
132 8.30%
21 Wereld Natuur Fonds 291 18.30%
22 Werkgroep Grauwe Kiekendief
13 0.82%
23 Werkgroep Roofvogels Nederland 51 3.21%
24 World Animal Protection Nederland
18 1.13%
25 Zoogdiervereniging
96 6.04%
26 Anders, namelijk: 550 34.59%
27 Geen
179 11.26%
Total 5287 100.00%
Van welke organisatie(s) bent u lid/donateur?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
90
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Dagelijks 69 4.34%
2 Een aantal keren per week 223 14.02%
3 Eén keer per week 108 6.79%
4 Aantal keren per maand 239 15.02%
5 Maximaal één keer per maand 363 22.82%
6 Nooit 589 37.02%
Total 1591 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Bomen, struiken en (bloeiende) planten 375 38.46%
2 Mossen en korstmossen 78 8.00%
3 Algen en kranswieren 24 2.46%
4 Paddenstoelen en schimmels 217 22.26%
5 Zoogdieren 463 47.49%
6 Vogels 772 79.18%
7 Vissen 121 12.41%
8 Amfibieën en reptielen 346 35.49%
9 Vlinders en libellen 517 53.03%
10 Overige insecten en andere ongewervelden 276 28.31%
11 Anders, namelijk: 63 6.46%
Total 3252 100.00%
Natuurmonitoring
Hoe vaak geeft u natuurwaarnemingen door?
Van welke soortgroepen geeft u waarnemingen door?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
91
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Via Waarneming.nl 658 67.49%
2 Via Telmee.nl 125 12.82%
3 Via de websites van soortenorganisaties 152 15.59%
4 Via telprojecten (bijv. meetnetten of de jaarrond tuintelling) 280 28.72%
5 Via NatureToday.com (Natuurkalender en Muggenradar) 43 4.41%
6 Anders, namelijk: 231 23.69%
7 Niet 15 1.54%
Total 1504 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Attenderen op waar op dat moment op gelet moet worden 522 53.81%
2 Herkenning van soorten 446 45.98%
3 Attenderen op bestaan van waarnemingsprojecten 204 21.03%
4 Belang van monitoring verduidelijken 136 14.02%
5 Instructie hoe waarnemingen gedaan moeten worden 114 11.75%
6 Motiveren om waarnemingen in te sturen 210 21.65%
7 Laat zien waar de waarnemingen voor gebruikt worden 248 25.57%
8 Identificeren van interessante gebieden om waarnemingen te doen 216 22.27%
9 Anders, namelijk: 23 2.37%
10 Niet, Nature Today is niet van invloed op mijn waarnemingen 219 22.58%
Total 2338 100.00%
Op welke manier geeft u weleens waarnemingen door?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
Op welke manier helpt de informatie op NatureToday.com u met het doen van waarnemingen?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
92
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Waarnemingsprojecten 583 37.64%
2 Resultaten van waarnemingsprojecten 877 56.62%
3 Herkennen van soorten 949 61.27%
4 Hoe natuurwaarnemingen het beste gedaan kunnen worden 532 34.34%
5 Methoden en technieken om waarnemingen te analyseren 400 25.82%
6 Innovaties om waarnemingen te doen 465 30.02%
7 Anders, namelijk: 24 1.55%
8 Geen interesse in bovenstaande onderwerpen 116 7.49%
Total 3946 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Politieke ontwikkelingen op gebied van natuur 850 54.84%
2 Ontwikkelingen in provinciaal natuurbeleid 903 58.26%
3 Ontwikkelingen in nationaal natuurbeleid 979 63.16%
4 Ontwikkelingen in Europees natuurbeleid 863 55.68%
5 Campagnes/projecten/initiatieven die natuurbeleid proberen te beïnvloeden 620 40.00%
6 Anders, namelijk: 55 3.55%
7 Geen interesse in bovenstaande onderwerpen 144 9.29%
Total 4414 100.00%
Natuurwaarnemingen
Over welke van de onderstaande natuurwaarnemingonderwerpen zou u berichten op
NatureToday.com willen zien?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
Natuurbeleid
Over welke van de onderstaande natuurbeleidonderwerpen zou u berichten op NatureToday.com
willen zien?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
93
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Succesvolle maatregelen/projecten op gebied van natuurbeheer
1119 72.15%
2 Invloed van beheer op natuur
1140 73.50%
3 Nieuwe inzichten op gebied van natuurbeheer
1168 75.31%
4 Uitdagingen op gebied van natuurbeheer
760 49.00%
5 Invloed van natuurwaarnemingen op natuurbeheer
856 55.19%
6 Anders, namelijk:
44 2.84%
7 Geen interesse in bovenstaande onderwerpen
64 4.13%
Total 5151 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Ja
630 40.80%
2 Nee
914 59.20%
Total 1544 100.00%
Natuurbeheer
Over welke van de onderstaande natuurbeheeronderwerpen zou u berichten op NatureToday.com
willen zien?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
Bent u betrokken bij natuurbeheer en natuurbeleid?
94
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Inrichting
196 31.41%
2 Onderhoud
318 50.96%
3 Planning
125 20.03%
4 Handhaving
84 13.46%
5 Vergunningverlening
41 6.57%
6 Monitoring
333 53.37%
7 Evaluatie
139 22.28%
8 Natuurontwikkeling
232 37.18%
9 Agrarisch natuurbeheer
103 16.51%
10 Exoten
83 13.30%
11 Anders, namelijk:
107 17.15%
Total 1761 100.00%
Hoe bent u betrokken bij natuurbeheer en natuurbeleid?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
95
Page Break
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Herkenning van planten- en diersoorten
939 60.58%
2 Uitleg over hoe je het beste natuurwaarnemingen kunt doen
445 28.71%
3 Onderzoeksresultaten
494 31.87%
4 Opvallende ontwikkelingen in de natuur
907 58.52%
5 Onderwerpen over natuurbeleid en -beheer
537 34.65%
6 Functionaliteiten van Nature Today
125 8.06%
7 Interessante natuurgebieden
786 50.71%
8 Diverse ecologische processen
709 45.74%
9 Anders, namelijk:
39 2.52%
10 Ik heb geen interesse in het bekijken van webinars
236 15.23%
Total 5217 100.00%
Webinars
Webinars zijn video’s over een bepaald natuuronderwerp waarin een specialist uitleg geeft. In deze video’s wordt dieper ingegaan op een bepaald natuurfenomeen, diersoort of plantensoort.
Over welke van onderstaande onderwerpen zou u webinar willen bekijken? (Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
96
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Facebook
637 41.10%
2 Twitter
193 12.45%
3 Instagram
114 7.35%
4 Snapchat
20 1.29%
5 Whatsapp
822 53.03%
6 Anders, namelijk:
124 8.00%
7 Geen
481 31.03%
Total 2391 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Ja
540 52.43%
2 Nee
490 47.57%
Total 1030 100.00%
Sociale media
Op welke sociale media bent u actief?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
Deelt u weleens natuurberichten via sociale media?
97
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Website
855 55.77%
2 Nature Today app
300 19.57%
3 Facebook
228 14.87%
4 Twitter
78 5.09%
5 Instagram
30 1.96%
6 Snapchat
5 0.33%
7 Emailnieuwsbrief
1057 68.95%
8 Anders namelijk:
34 2.22%
Total 2587 100.00%
Via welke mediakanalen zou u graag door Nature Today geïnformeerd worden?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
98
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Locatiegebonden natuurinformatie
565 36.90%
2 Notificaties over natuurnieuws in de omgeving
486 31.74%
3 Geattendeerd worden op nieuwe publicaties van bepaalde organisaties
461 30.11%
4 Geattendeerd worden op nieuwe publicaties van bepaalde auteurs
226 14.76%
5 Meer verhalen
133 8.69%
6 Meer opinieverhalen
140 9.14%
7 Zelf de site in te kunnen richten naar eigen wensen
49 3.20%
8 Meer verhalen over internationale natuur
339 22.14%
9 Informatie over specifieke natuurgebieden
635 41.48%
10 Informatie over activiteiten en evenementen over natuur (activiteitenkalender)
363 23.71%
11 Informatie over activiteiten en evenementen in de natuur (activiteitenkalender)
310 20.25%
12 Geen mening
338 22.08%
13 Anders, namelijk:
58 3.79%
Total 4103 100.00%
Verbeteringen
Wat zou voor u Nature Today nog meer verbeteren?
(Meerdere antwoorden mogelijk)
99
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Man
1002 67.66%
2 Vrouw
479 32.34%
Total 1481 100.00%
# Question Responses Mean
1 Leeftijd 1500 58.65
Algemene informatie
Wat is uw geslacht?
Wat is uw leeftijd?
100
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Geen
14 0.96%
2 Basisonderwijs
27 1.85%
3 LBO/VMBO
105 7.18%
4 HAVO/VWO
145 9.92%
5 MBO
205 14.02%
6 HBO
531 36.32%
7 WO
435 29.75%
Total 1462 100.00%
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Alleenstaand 366 24.68%
2 Alleenstaand met kinderen
36 2.43%
3 Samenwonend met kinderen
312 21.04%
4 Samenwonend zonder kinderen
769 51.85%
Total 1483 100.00%
Wat is uw hoogst genoten opleiding?
Wat is uw gezinssituatie?