Conceptualization of a digital service aiming at solving the issues faced by university students when going on exchange in Belgium

Details

Supervisors

Belleflamme, Paul ; Lejeune, Christophe

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en ingénieur de gestion

Abstract

According to the Erasmus+ annual reports, more than ten thousand students are taking part in an exchange program every year in Belgium. Included in their university curriculum, this program aims at giving them the opportunity to learn from a different cultural perspective and prepare themselves for an increasingly internationalized work environment. However, a difficult and tedious administrative procedure coupled with a difficult cultural integration can harm the experience. By following the Business Model Canvas structure, this thesis aims at investigating the launch of a digital service that would solve the existing issues and at assessing its feasibility through business models. After identifying the exchange students’ needs and problems through both qualitative and quantitative surveys, the service attributes were determined and classified by priority depending on the user preferences. Through a thorough review of the digital literature, the development of a hybrid mobile application has been chosen as the most appropriate tool. By both centralizing all the necessary information a student may need and by providing some key features meeting their requirements, this mobile application could become an essential tool for all the exchange students enrolled in an international program in a Belgian university. As a particularity of multi-sided platforms, the service scope would include additional customer segments contributing to the platform sustainability through positive network effects. The value proposition through the platform would “facilitate and harmonize the exchange student management process” of universities and enable local and national businesses to “expose their brand to the international students’ community”. As the exchange students, user of the service, are the subsidy group, all the revenue will be generated by the universities and the businesses.