Business Model Canvas - Pinterest

Pinterest can create a profitable business model by connecting their primary customer segments: the mass market and online retailers.  Pinterest offers the mass market a venue to conveniently compile custom visual inspiration from entire web.  The value proposition they offer to online retailers is product exposure to the mass market, which can lead to sales.  The value propositions get delivered to their relevant customer segment through the Pinterest website.  The problem is that Pinterest is not getting compensated for the traffic they deliver to other websites.  This is not a new business model, but a working one that Pinterest needs to implement.  This is where the key activity of developing partnerships with online retailers becomes vital. Essentially, Pinterest allows the mass market a venue to create their own personalized boards of ads that they want to see.   Pinterest’s task is to connect each pinned image to an online retailer where that item can be purchased.  Pinterest’s business is to help people materialize their pins.  For each referral that Pinterest sends to an online retailer that results in a sale, Pinterest should receive a percentage of that sale.  They can augment these sales by partnering with key opinion leaders in the fashion / design fields and employing them to create pin boards that users follow and make purchases from.  A key activity for Pinterest is to improve and add more functionality to their website since this is the channel for delivery of value propositions to consumers.  Thus, their key resource is intellectual in nature.  With 48.7 million users, it is easy to see that Pinterest has a high potential for profits by employing the right business model.  

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