Uma pergunta que gera muitas outras perguntas

Por causa de uma discussão no Facebook tentei alerter alguns estonianos para as consequências da adopção do euro. Por isso, voltei aos textos sobre a Portuguese-trap (aqui e aqui), ao relê-los, fiquei preso aquela pequena frase de Olivier Blanchard:

“First, fiscal policy should not seek to offset a contraction in demand, even if the Baltic economies enter a period of slow growth. Drawing on Portugal’s experience, Olivier Blanchard (MIT) argued at the EP-IMF seminar that a fiscal stimulus would be a false solution. More public spending would drive up prices and wages and undermine competitiveness. After all, the heart of the problem is insufficient external, not internal, demand.”

O nosso problema não é a procura interna mas a fraca procura externa. Rapidamente a minha mente lembrou-se das palavras de Peter Drucker na bíblia “Management –Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices”:

“To know what a business is, we have to start with its purpose. Its purpose must lie outside of the business itself. In fact, it must lie in society, since business enterprise is an organ of society. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”

Se a nossa procura externa é insuficiente é porque muitas das nossas empresas ainda não interiorizaram as implicações de viver num mundo em que a procura é inferior à oferta. Por exemplo, ainda segundo Drucker:

“It is the customer who determines what a business is. It is the customer alone whose willingness to pay for a good or for a service converts economic resources into wealth, things into goods. What the customer buys and considers value is never a product. It is always utility, that is, what a product or a service does for him.

With respect to the definition of business purpose and business mission, there is only one such focus, one starting point. It is the customer. The customer defines the business. A business is not defined by the company’s name, statutes, or articles of incorporation. It is defined by the want the customer satisfies when he buys a product or a service. To satisfy the customer is the mission and purpose of every business.

The question “What is our business?” can, therefore, be answered only by looking at the business from the outside, from the point of view of customer and market.

All the customer is interested in is his own values, his own wants, his own reality. For this reason alone, any serious attempt to state “what our business is” must start with the customer, and her realities, situation, behavior, expectations, and values."

Daí que a grande questão, aquela que desencadeia uma cascata de outras perguntas que testam um negócio é, para Drucker:

“Who is the customer?” is the first and the crucial question in defining business purpose and business mission. It is not an easy, let alone an obvious question. How it is answered determines, in large measure, how the business defines itself. The consumer—that is, the ultimate user of a product or a service—is always a customer. But he is never the customer; there are usually at least two, sometimes more. Each customer defines a different business, has different expectations and values, buys something different.”

Amanhã espero ser capaz de demonstrar a série de questões que decorrem daquela questão inicial “Quem é o nosso cliente?” e, como o mercado não é homogéneo, a questão é melhor colocada se for “Quem é o nosso cliente-alvo?”