A CONCEPTUAL BARBER-GERAK BUSINESS MODEL: BUILD-UP SKILLS AND ENHANCE JOB OPPORTUNITIES AS BARBER-PRENEURS FOR THE UNDEREMPLOYED, UNEMPLOYED, AND B40 COMMUNITY

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual multi-sided platform business model including an app that shows the availability of a barber service called Barber-Gerak. This platform will be created in order to address the key challenges that have been faced by various customer segments (CS) such as the difficulty in finding decent quality barbering services with reasonable prices, and the unavailability of the services needed outside of office hours. Due to this, customers usually find themselves conflicted to get certain services they want. The extreme pain faced by barbers is the difficulty to reach customers at their own home. As for the B40 community, most of them are unemployed or under-employed due to the after effect of the pandemic. The gain from this platform is to find first quality barber services in society. A user friendly digital platform needs to be developed using certain programming languages. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) mapped to this paper are SDG 8 which is Decent Work and Economic Growth, and SDG 1 which is No Poverty. The methodology that will be used is the Design Thinking method where it is used to define the key challenges and extreme pains, and provide a suitable solution for that challenges and problems. Hence, this paper offers a possible conceptual and sustainable solution via multi-sided platform business model and digital platform/app for the underemployed, the unemployed, and the B40 community as barber-preneurs.