O que se pode aprender com quem compete em mercados emergentes?

Admitamos um cenário de depressão económica mundial continuada.
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Com o fim do crédito fácil e barato temos e teremos connosco por alguns anos a derrocada na procura, a queda na capacidade de consumir.
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Como enfrentar esta nova paisagem?
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Peter Williamson e Ming Zeng publicam na Harvard Business Review deste mês de Março um interessante artigo com algumas pistas que podem ser exploradas.
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Primeiro a situação actual:
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"No one needs convincing that the economic situation we’re facing today is almost unprecedented. Yet much of the advice that executives have received is remarkably similar to what they heard during the recession in 2000. Particularly in Western enterprises, the preferred antidotes seem to be standard ones: Evaluate your risks, develop contingency plans, focus on your core, reduce costs, expect the unexpected, and so on. The unspoken objective appears to be to survive or, at most, to maintain market share.
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Like many orthodoxies, however, this will not serve companies well today. The world has changed so much because of, among other reasons, deregulation, lowering of trade barriers, rapid technological advances, demographic shifts, and greater urbanization, that strategies that worked a decade ago are unlikely to do so anymore. Previously, downturns often favored incumbents, which possess economies of scale and customer relationships that allowed them to prevail over upstarts. What’s different now is that companies from several emerging markets are poised to wrest market share from, or even take over, Western firms."
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O que os autores propõem é que analisemos a forma como actuaram algumas empresas de sucesso em mercados emergentes (mercados caracterizados por um fraco poder de compra)
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"During the Depression, (...) companies developed value-for-money strategies: They grew by delivering products and services that enabled hard-hit consumers to do more with the same resources and become more effective; to do the same with fewer resources, thereby improving their efficiency; or to do less with far fewer resources, which helped them economize.
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Value for money has again become a strategic imperative—and not just because of the recession."
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"In both the developed and the developing world, therefore, delivering value for money has become critical. What capabilities must companies possess to thrive in this environment? Our research suggests that instead of refining cost-cutting techniques, companies should develop cost-innovation capabilities. They must learn to reengineer their cost structures in novel ways so they can offer customers dramatically more for less. That may not be good news for many U.S., European, and Japanese corporations, which have usually dealt with low-cost competitors by going upmarket and creating premium segments, both at home and abroad."
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Os autores propõem a inovação para reduzir os custos.
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"The idea of innovating to develop offerings that provide greater, or almost the same, functionality but at a lower price is unconventional. Some executives may regard it as silly: Why invest in research to sell products for less than the prevailing price? However, smart companies in emerging markets have done just that to appeal to the great mass of value-conscious customers at home."
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E depois, algo que faz recordar "The Blue Ocean Strategy" de Chan e Mauborgne:
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"Cost-innovation strategies are disruptive in that they result in products or services that look inferior in some ways to existing ones but are more affordable and easier to use than incumbents’ offerings."
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"Como não acredito em acasos fico a pensar nesta coincidência "No meio não está a virtude, ou seja, não vale guterrear"
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Os autores apresentam três avenidas de progresso e pesquisa:
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"Selling high-tech products at mass-market prices.
Companies often apply the latest technology only to the most complex applications or sell it to early adopters. By restricting a state-of-the-art technology to a few segments initially and transferring it to mainstream markets over time, they capture the maximum value throughout its life and enhance the return on their investment in research and development. However, some newcomers from developing countries have found ways to offer the latest technology to mass-market customers at low prices."
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Ou seja, serializar a produção de artigos que de outra forma não abandonariam a categoria de protótipo ou semi-protótipo.
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"Offering choice and customization to value customers.
Customers usually have to pay hefty premiums if they want a large selection of products or customized offerings. That’s because most companies in developed countries, which focus on gaining economies of scale, fear that if they offer a plethora of choices, their operations will spiral out of control. They will spend additional time making changeovers on manufacturing lines and lose money from write-offs on obsolete inventory. But companies in emerging markets have been able to transform the rules of variety and customization by learning to gain economies of scope."
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Ou seja, apostar na flexibilidade, reduzir os limites que tornam uma pequena série rentável, para poder apostar em séries mais pequenas, maior diversidade, maior rapidez.
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"Turning premium niches into mass markets.
Most companies define a niche market as one that consists of relatively few customers willing to pay premium prices for goods and services that meet their specialized requirements. They don’t check to see if there may be a wellspring of latent demand choked off by high prices and poor value-for-money offerings."
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Mais do que nunca a grande restrição vai continuar a ser, e ampliada, a conquista de clientes.