Modelos mentais, clientes ou concorrentes, qual o foco?

"Any path to understanding complex systems involves building evidence-based, statistically sound abstract representations of different aspects of reality. The same reality can be approached from different perspectives, using different paths and tools, but always through the manipulation of abstractions. As practically minded and down-to-earth as you may be, you cannot shy away from abstractions and deny the omnipresent role of your mental models in guiding your actions. [Moi ici: O mais difícil é reconhecer que vemos o mundo através desses modelos. Anil Seth, "the brain is continually generating predictions about sensory signals" , descreve-nos como um cérebro fechado numa prisão de osso e que aprende a interpretar o mundo através de um jogo de ténis entre sinais recebidos e sinais enviados. E esquecemos que isso está sempre a acontecer. As nossas interpretações são fruto desses padrões de aprendizagem. Há tempos, numa conversa percebi uma reacção de uma maestrina que estranhei, ela estava a dizer que o cântico estava errado. Eu olhei para a folha e fixei-me no que sei ler, o texto. E pensei: Duh! O texto está OK. Depois, percebi que ela estava a referir-se à partitura. A música que lá estava era outra.]

...

A company's mission statement defines its raison d'être. Why does it exist? A company's business model specifies how it exists and grows. ... The business model must spell out how and for whom the company creates value and how it translates this value into profit.

...

We shall differentiate the business model concept from that of business strategy, to be construed as the overall game plan to beat competition. [Moi ici: Come on!!! "game plan to beat competition". Um livro que parece tão interessante e com esta linguagem arcaica? Para mim é "game plan to seduce clients" - Getting back to strategy ] The business model further entails the setting up of a sustainable network of partners and suppliers. "What trusted partners can make up for what we cannot do on our own?"

Trechos retirados de "Complex Service Delivery Processes - Strategy to Operations" de Jean Harvey.

A minha primeira lei sobre a concorrência?

Perante este tweet dei logo resposta:

O artigo é este, "O curioso caso dos patrões portugueses que não querem um mercado liberalizado" e para quem não conhece a 1ª Lei de Arroja:

"Primeira Lei Arroja da Concorrência: “A concorrência é boa e desejável em todos os sectores de actividade, excepto no nosso”

Pensar que as empresas são todas iguais... come on.

Recordar:

• A mentalidade socialista (não confundir com os partidos) (Maio de 2010)
• Politicamente incorrecto (Abril de 2014)
• Curiosidade do dia (Outubro de 2016)

Neste blogue há uma lei para as empresas grandes de um sector económico (2014):

"Recordar qual é a primeira lei,  quando uma empresa grande pretende livrar-se de concorrentes sem os comprar?
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Aumentar as barreiras legais e regulamentares!"

Daqui (2010):

"Qual é a minha primeira lei sobre a concorrência? Quando um mercado está saturado, a primeira via para eliminar concorrência é aumentar as barreiras burocráticas," 

Uma pregação em prol da ... concorrência imperfeita

Continuo a minha leitura matinal de "Fundamentals of Business-to-Business Marketing - Mastering Business Markets" editado por Michael Kleinaltenkamp, Wulff Plinke, Ian Wilkinson e Ingmar Geiger.

Estão a ver o choradinho e a falta de noção deste senhor, "Boas notícias, Portugal a ser abandonado pelo negócio do preço (parte II)"?

Imaginem o que diria desta linguagem:

"We have come to understand the market process as a never-ending process of learning for all involved, a process that is kept running by the entrepreneur who detects profit opportunities. Entrepreneurs sense differences in the market, they discover the possibility to sell something at a higher price than they can buy it for, and they disperse this knowledge—voluntarily or involuntarily—to other market participants. This process is a competitive one that rewards the capable and punishes the less able. Competition among sellers, therefore, has a selection function that creates better problem solutions for the buyer.
The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises described the situation in the following way: “The entrepreneur can only act a step ahead of his competitors if he strives toward serving the market more cheaply and better. More cheaply means richer supply; better means supply with products not yet in the market”"

Depois, o livro apresenta esta figura:

Sabem o que vem aí?
Uma pregação em prol da ... concorrência imperfeita.

"Homogeneity: The offers in a market are homogeneous if they resemble each other in all aspects, so that the buyer perceives no difference among them. Offers are heterogeneous if they differ either objectively or as perceived by the buyer.
• Knowledge: Buyers have complete market knowledge if they know without delay about all offers in the market.
• Barriers: Barriers hinder free market entry: new sellers cannot enter the market without entry costs or constraints, and sellers already in the market cannot imitate the characteristics and behavior of other sellers.
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Information shortages and quality differences that initially exist will tend to disappear, and the temporary profits of cases 2–4 will disappear, shifting the situation to case 1.
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Cases 5 and 6 differ from cases 1 to 4 because barriers exist. Barriers act as an obstacle to competition for new entrants as well as for those already in the market. Market entry barriers are always disadvantageous for new entrants compared to incumbent sellers, because the latter can approach buyers more easily than new entrants. And if a seller has a first mover advantage compared to its competitors then others cannot catch up—either because they are unable to (the advantage is too great) or because they do not want to (e.g., they are afraid of the first movers’ response).
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Hence, barriers are, among other things, the reason for sellers earning profits significantly higher than competitors.
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The picture of competition created in cases 5 and 6 provides the basis for an analysis of competitive advantage. Dynamic seller competition means that sellers are permanently searching for and experimenting with new products or services in order to find or create ones that distinguish themselves from those of other sellers, in terms of value to the buyer and/or the costs they incur. If a competitor succeeds in operating with lower costs than its competitors, then it can offer lower prices to buyers, which can increase its market share and profits. If a seller succeeds in offering a better product or service without higher costs, then it can increase prices and earn higher profits. This never-ending search and experimentation has only one aim: By differentiation, the seller wants to avoid being substitutable. Furthermore, a seller strives to establish a difference that is sustainable; it wants to avoid being imitated."

"not “winning,” “beating,” or “defeating” competitors"

Motards, Dastardlys, ...

“To get ahead of disruption, we need to pay far more attention to customers than we ordinarily do, and commensurately less attention to competitors. We need to discipline ourselves to look at markets from the customer’s perspective, not just the company’s, and to understand customers’ evolving desires and behaviors.
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At first glance, executives might resist shifting their strategic focus from competitors to customers. In my experience, most executives care about customers, but they are obsessed with competitors—and understandably so. Modern business strategy has focused squarely on the firm, on assessing the competitive landscape, and on responding to competitors.
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Game theory models, meanwhile, conceptualize games as played with a competitor. Customers are secondary, conceived as the “prize” for which competitors are vying.
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Focusing on competitors has worked well in the past, and it might still work in some situations, but it has become less applicable for companies competing in markets threatened with disruption. Traditional corporate strategy assumed a situation in which companies faced only one or a few competitors, and in which opponents’ actions were somewhat predictable. Under such conditions, competition really did bear more similarity to a chess match or to warfare. In today’s markets, incumbents across many industries often square off against not one or two large and predictable opponents, but dozens more of small, nimble, and less predictable challengers.
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For these reasons alone, executives would do better to return to the basics of business—not “winning,” “beating,” or “defeating” competitors, but acquiring and retaining customers. Entrepreneurs at disruptive startups see the world in precisely this way, paying heed to Peter Drucker’s famous dictum “The purpose of a business is to create a customer.” Indeed, entrepreneurs perceive the focus on customers as a defining quality of startups as opposed to incumbents.”

A mesma doença está na base disto:

"I’m a terrified dinosaur. I’ve been living in this cozy world of old brands [and] big volumes. You could just focus on being very efficient and you’d be OK. All of a sudden we are being disrupted in all ways. If you go to a supermarket, you see hundreds of new brands. In beer, we had the new kinds of beer coming in from all over. We are running to adjust."

Trechos iniciais retirados de “Unlocking the Customer Value Chain” de Thales S. Teixeira.

"Who wants to live for ever? "

"Who wants to live for ever? For those of us who don’t, a long, healthy life – of 90 years, say – is enough. In the mid-1920s, 90 years happened to be the average lifespan of a leading company. Ninety years for us, 90 years for our companies: a neat mirroring of our own existence in what we made manifest in the world.
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By the 1950s, the average company lifespan was down to 60 years. Today, it is a mere 17 years. Why are our companies dying young?"

Considerar também "Why Kodak Died and Fujifilm Thrived: A Tale of Two Film Companies" e "Superstar companies also feel the threat of disruption".

Trecho retirado de "Going extinct: why corporate giants die"

"rivalry can motivate competitors to perform at higher levels"

Excelente texto, "Research: We Take More Risks When We Compete Against Rivals":

"Rivalry is everywhere. We see rivalries in sports, business, school, and basically any arena where there is competition.
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There are many stories highlighting the benefits of rivalry, from how it makes competitors more motivated to how it helps them perform better.
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Yet despite the wealth of anecdotal evidence, scientific research into such rivalry relationships is scarce. We’ve spent the last few years studying what makes rivalry unique, how it affects our behavior, and how it impacts organizations.
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Our past findings support the idea that rivalry can motivate competitors to perform at higher levels, and they reveal that rivalry is sparked by experiences of similarity, repeated competition, and closely-decided contests.
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Our findings carry some important implications for individuals and organizations. Risk-taking is not inherently good or bad; it depends on the context. In organizations and industries in which experimentation, innovation, bold strategic moves, and thinking outside the box are valued (e.g., technology), rivalry could be an important lever for managers to pull to incentivize risk-taking. This could mean emphasizing longstanding corporate rivalries, or fostering (friendly) rivalries between employees, perhaps by creating incentive systems that provide for repeated competitions (of course, there are risks to doing this that should also be considered).
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On the other hand, some jobs and industries demand high-reliability, mistake-free output (e.g., accounting). In these contexts, managers would be well-served to minimize the effect of rivalry on their own, and their employees’, decisions. Managers should first assess the extent to which they want to encourage or discourage risk-taking behavior, and then find ways to either emphasize or de-emphasize rivalries to reach the organization’s ideal level of risk-taking. It’s also important to consider the physiological effects of rivalry, as long periods of competition against rivals could lead to stress-related burnout, due to chronically elevated arousal."

"There is only one thing that you can focus on to beat your competitor for deals"

"If focusing on your competitor would improve your sales results, it would be worth the time spent talking about them and the emotional energy invested. Your results, however, are not changed by this outward focus on what your competitor does.
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There is only one thing that you can focus on to beat your competitor for deals, and that one thing is you and how you sell.
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You win when you create greater value and justify the delta between your competitor’s price and yours, explaining in a way that is both clear and compelling what they give up by investing less.
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You win when you poison the well by explaining how certain things can’t be done, why they can’t be done, and how there are people who suggest that they can do these things who you follow to pick up the pieces (without naming names, and without any sour grapes).
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You win when you develop the reputation of being a trusted partner, doing the things that you are supposed to do when you are supposed to do them, and how they are supposed to be done.
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None of this has anything to do with your competitor. There is no reason to let your competitor live rent-free in your head, carrying them around with you into every meeting. Instead, decide to be so good that they have to think about how they are going to beat you."

Trechos retirados de "Stop Focusing on Your Competitor"

"As long as competitive advantage is temporary..."

"As long as competitive advantage is temporary, even the largest companies have to focus on serving customers in order to stay on top. But if the Blockbusters of the world are able to cement their status and no longer need to fear the Netflixes, customers, competitors, and society all stand to lose."

Como não recordar o comboio de empresas do regime que o choque revelado em 2011 tem contribuído para aniquilar.


Trecho retirado de "Making Sense of Our Very Competitive, Super Monopolistic Economy"

"think about selling a transformation"

"The starting point of most competitive analysis is a question: Who is your competition? That’s because most companies view their competition as another brand, product, or service. But smart leaders and organizations go broader.
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The question is not who your competition is but what it is. And the answer is this: Your competition is any and every obstacle your customers encounter along their journeys to solving the human, high-level problems your company exists to solve.
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Sure, someone in your company needs to understand the marketplace: who your competition is, what other products are on the market, and how they are doing, at a basic level. But there’s a point at which paying attention to other companies and what they’re doing interferes with your team’s ability to immerse itself in the world of your consumer. Focusing on competitive products and companies often leads to “me-too” products, which purport to compete with or iterate on something that customers might not have liked much in the first place.
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First, rethink what you sell. Most companies think they sell a product. To transcend strictly one-time, transactional relationships with your customers, your company must think about selling a transformation: a journey from a problematic status quo to the new levels and possibilities that will unfurl after the behavior change you help make happen.
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Next, rethink your customers. They are not just the people who have purchased your product or the people who follow you on Facebook. Your customers are all the people who grapple with the problem your business exists to solve.
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Now, focus on their problems. Engage in customer research, online and in the real world, to understand and document their journeys. I don’t mean their customer life cycle with your brand. Map out your (redefined) customer’s journey from having the problem you exist to solve to no longer having that problem. That may be the journey from unhealthy to healthy living, or from being broke to being a good steward of their finances."

Recordar o Dick Dastardly e os observadores de motards.

Trechos retirados de "Obsess Over Your Customers, Not Your Rivals"

A imagem

A imagem escolhida para ilustrar este artigo "Três mil trabalhadores vão ser despedidos" é tão reveladora...

"A Air France vai despedir cerca de mil trabalhadores em 2016, no âmbito do plano de reestruturação social da transportadora aérea, disse hoje o presidente do Conselho de Administração do grupo Air France-KLM, Alexandre de Juniac.
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o plano de reestruturação social prevê que sejam despedidos no total 2.900 trabalhadores nos próximos dois anos."

É a concorrência, traduzida na opção individual dos passageiros perante as várias possibilidades que têm pela sua frente, a pensar no melhor para a sua vida, que determina a cascata de causalidade que leva a este resultado.
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É a mesma concorrência que leva este bastião ao mesmo tipo de medida:

"O "The Guardian" vai avançar com "cortes editoriais profundos", na sequência de uma quebra significativa das vendas de publicidade. A saída de trabalhadores é "altamente provável", avançou a edição europeia do ‘site' Politico, que teve acesso a um documento em que David Pemsel, administrador-executivo do Guardian Media Group, admite que este poderá ser um dos períodos mais difíceis que o grupo enfrentou nos últimos anos. Para reduzir os custos, o grupo está a estudar cortes nas contratações, salários, viagens e noutras despesas."

Inovação e concorrência interna

Uns queixam-se de que em Portugal há pouca inovação.
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Os que mais se queixam da falta de inovação em Portugal são, também, os que mais defendem a necessidade de campeões nacionais e outras redomas protectoras, tão típicas de sociedades extractivas à la Acemoglu.
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Queixam-se de que Portugal precisa de mais inovação e, no entanto, a isto:

"Finally, in the context of rigid labor markets and limited domestic competition, the authorities must implement additional structural reforms to absorb the large labor slack and spur economic growth.
...
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In particular, countries with (i) more flexible labor markets; (ii) more developed manufacturing industries, relative to services sectors; (iii) more intense local  competitions; and (iv) higher integration with the global value-chain, tend to export more domestic value-added."

Fazem isto:

Entretanto:

"firms in some sectors will be neck-and-neck. In turn in such sectors, increased product market competition, by making life more difficult for neck-and-neck firms, will encourage them to innovate in order to acquire a lead over their rival in the sector. This we refer to as the escape competition effect. On the other hand, in unleveled sectors where firms are not neck-and-neck, increased product market competition will tend to discourage innovation by laggard firms as it decreases the short-run extra profit from catching up with the leader. This we call the Schumpeterian effect. Finally, the steady-state fraction of neck-and-neck sectors will itself depend upon the innovation intensities in neck-and-neck versus unleveled sectors. This we refer to as the composition effect.
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Prediction 1: The relationship between competition and innovation follows an inverted-U pattern.
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Prediction 2: More intense competition enhances innovation in "frontier" firms but may discourage it in "non-frontier" firms."

Trechos iniciais e gráfico retirados do relatório do FMI de Maio de 2015 sobre Portugal.
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Segundo grupo de trechos retirados de "Lessons from Schumpeterian Growth Theory" de Philippe Aghion, Ufuk Akcigit e Peter Howitt, publicado por Papers and Proceedings de maio de 2015.

Acerca da evolução da competição (parte II)

Quando em "Acerca da evolução da competição" escrevi:

"Em próximo postal voltarei a Favaro e à minha reflexão pessoal sobre a evolução da estratégia."

Ainda não tinha lido "Terroir" de Seth Godin:

"Heinz ketchup has no terroir. It always tastes like everywhere and nowhere and the same. A Dijon mustard from a small producer in France, though, you can taste where it came from. Foodies seek out this distinction in handcrafted chocolate or wine or just about anything where the land and environment are thought to matter.
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But we can extend the idea to you, to your work, to the thing you're building.
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It's not like anyplace else. It's not like everyplace else.
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Consistent doesn't mean, "like everybody else."[Moi ici: Cá está o ponto que eu critico na Qualidade, a demasiada concentração na normalização]  Consistent in this case means, "like yourself." If we took just one drop of your work and your reputation and the trail you leave behind, could we reconstruct the rest of it?
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The pressure on each of us to fit in, to industrialize, to be more like Heinz--it's huge. But to do so is to lose the essence of what we make."

Terroir é uma palavra que o meu pai me ensinou acerca dos vinhos e da sua diferenciação... é uma palavra que vai ficar a fazer parte do léxico deste blogue e do meu trabalho. O que eu pensava acerca das palavras de Favaro, reforçado com o texto de Godin é o que relato aqui "O meio pode albergar posições intermédias viáveis".

Acerca da evolução da competição

Em "A Brief History of the Ways Companies Compete" Favaro faz um breve resumo da evolução dos grandes vectores de competição desde a Revolução Industrial:

"Since the late nineteenth century, we have seen five distinct movements in the way companies compete. The first was efficiency. This was the original purpose of forming corporations — to facilitate the production of products and services with the least amount of wasted time, materials, and labor. The attempt to turn business into a science of efficiency, also known as “Taylorism,” marked the high point of this movement. Many companies still compete this way and there continue to be successors to Taylorism, including business process reengineering and lean production.[Moi ici: Por favor, não me acusem de denegrir o "lean production", o "lean production" pode ser bom ou mau, como a caneta, mais aqui]
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The second movement was scale, a close cousin of efficiency. This is where companies exploit economies of scale that yield lower unit costs and enable sharper pricing of their goods and services.
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Scale and efficiency are mostly about competing by lowering costs. In the early 1980s, a new way of competing broke on to the world stage: the quality movement, with the deification of W. Edwards Deming, who introduced quality as a way of life for Japanese companies.
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Today quality, efficiency, and scale stand side-by-side as ways of competing. For every Wal-Mart and Ford that competes mostly on price, there’s a Nordstrom and BMW that competes mostly on quality. [Moi ici: Não posso concordar com Favaro. Favaro confunde qualidade como "ausência de defeitos" com qualidade como "algo com mais atributos". Não se pode dizer que a Nordstrom tem mais qualidade que a Wal-Mart se o conceito for a ausência de defeitos, assim como se pode dizer que o BMW tem mais qualidade que o Fiat se estivermos a falar na quantidade de atributos. Assim, a qualidade à la Deming, incluiria como mais uma ferramenta de redução de custos. Aliás, essa é a grande crítica que faço ao movimento da Qualidade, o ter cristalizado há muito no chão da fábrica, o ter ficado seduzida pela variabilidade, quando, o que conta cada vez mais é a variedade, daí o fim da marca Redsigma.]
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But after the rise of Japan proved not to be a miracle after all, and with the rise of the internet, a new, fourth movement was born in the 1990s: the network way of competing. Instead of winning customers based on cost or quality (or both), companies began to compete based on how many people (or businesses) use them. [Moi ici: Aquilo que Kaplan me ensinou a designar por estratégias lock-in]
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Today, the network movement has given way to a fifth: the so-called ecosystem way of competing. This an approach of co-opting third parties to build on and leverage your products and services such that they have more total utility to your customers. Your advantage comes not so much from the number of customers you have as from the number of partners you have working with or on top of your products and services."

Depois, Favaro termina a olhar para o futuro:

"All the above begs a question: Will we see any new ways of competing become a sixth movement in the corporate world? [Moi ici: E dá algumas ideias: Agility, disruption, data analytics, integration]
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Whether any of these become a full-blown movement or not, it’s clear that there’s a much bigger menu of ways to compete today compared to a century ago. That’s a good indication of how complex competing in the business world has become."

Este final fez-me logo pensar no paralelismo entre biologia e economia e, daí, chegar a "Mais estratégias, mais valor acrescentado, mais nichos, mais diversidade" e aos seus gráficos. E daí chegar a "Rethinking extinction":

"The fossil record shows that biodiversity in the world has been increasing dramatically for 200 million years and is likely to continue."

Como não pensar em Feyrabend, quando se trata da sobrevivência, aprendemos com MacGyver, "anything goes":

"‘Genes are jumping around. Molecular genetics is finding that hybridisation between species is more common than previously suspected. Darwin talked about a tree of life, with species branching out and separating. But we are discovering it is more of a network, with genes moving between close branches as related species interbreed. This hybridisation quickly opens up evolutionary  opportunities.
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Move, adapt or die. When organisms challenged by climate change respond by adapting, they evolve. When they move, they often encounter distant cousins and hybridise with them, sometimes evolving new species.
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Throughout 3.8 billion years of evolution on Earth, the inexorable trend has been toward an ever greater variety of species. With the past two mass extinction events there were soon many more species alive after each catastrophe than there were before it."

Em próximo postal voltarei a Favaro e à minha reflexão pessoal sobre a evolução da estratégia.

Mitos, para reflexão

Há tempos uma colega consultora mandou-me este artigo "4 Marketing Myths Threaten Your Sales" de onde sublinho estas passagens:

"People Always Buy Where They Get the Cheapest Price
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If this was true, only businesses that charge cheap prices would exist. Some people buy where they get the cheapest price. But most people are more interested in getting value for their money than in getting a bargain.
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Offering Your Customers Many Options Will Boost Your Sales [Moi ici: Este é um mito tremendamente popular e, por isso, muito nefasto]
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Presenting your customers with options usually reduces your sales. Here’s why…
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When confronted with several options, most customers have difficulty making a clear decision. They often react by procrastinating – and never making a decision. When this happens, you lose a sale you already had.
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Tip: Try to limit your customer’s decision making to either “Yes. I’ll buy.” or “No. I won’t buy”. Don’t risk losing them by including “which one” decisions.
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Everybody Needs My Product/Service
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That’s what YOU think. Most of them don’t think they need it…and most aren’t ready to spend their money for it.
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The hazard of this myth is that it causes many marketers to believe they can succeed without doing much marketing or selling.
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Tip: Look for narrowly defined niche markets where your product or service solves a unique need of the customers. [Moi ici: Isto é tão difícil de meter na cabeça de um empresário. Deixar mercado para outros é tão anti-instintivo... o live and let live, dá mais facilmente lugar aos "motards lover's"e aos Dick Dastardly] Focus your marketing on them instead of trying to reach a broadly defined general market. You’ll generate more sales and enjoy a better return on your advertising expense.

...

Concorrência versus Clientes

Uma preocupação já por várias vezes referida neste blogue:

"As Peter Drucker emphasized, “The purpose of a business is to create a customer.” That’s also the purpose of any business strategy: make customers, not war. In my experience at strategy meetings, most executives spend too much time discussing competitors and not nearly enough time discussing customers: who they are, their key concerns, how they buy, why, and where."

Trecho retirado de "Stop Using Battle Metaphors in Your Company Strategy"

Acerca do fenómeno das empresas tipo-Dick Dastardly

Há anos que escrevo sobre o fenómeno das empresas tipo-Dick Dastardly:

Empresas que se preocupam mais com a concorrência do que com o viver da sua própria vida:

• "A ver passar motards"; e
• "Quasi uma blasfémia".

Daí o sublinhar de:

"“Never innovate to compete, innovate to change the rules of the game” to express the mindset of a true innovator.
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our culture likes to pit companies against each other because it’s the type of  stuff that grabs headlines; unfortunately most can’t see beyond the bias.
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For me, innovation makes competition irrelevant. Anywhere. Period."

Trechos retirados de "True innovation makes competition irrelevant"

A ver passar motards

No passado dia 15 de Julho, durante a minha caminhada matinal, ouvi parte da história na rádio e comentei no Twitter:

Sábado, o Aranha, no FB, alertou-me para a campanha "Vamos lá provocar a IKEA".
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Chegando ao site da feira do móvel em Paços de Ferreira apanha-se com "43ª Capital do Móvel: venha ver móveis a sério!".
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Cada vez mais me convenço que a Associação de Paços de Ferreira falhou o tiro ao resolver picar o IKEA.
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Fazem-me lembrar os anúncios na net do Old Spice.
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Há uns anos esses anúncios tornaram-se virais e muito comentados nas redes sociais entre os marketeiros. Os anúncios foram um sucesso em todo o lado mas... à parte toda a fama e falatório, as vendas de Old Spice, descontando o efeito dos cupões e promoções, não mexeram.
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Quem são os clientes-alvo do IKEA?
Quem são os clientes-alvo dos móveis a sério de Paços de Ferreira?
São os mesmos?
Claro que não.
Podem até vir a ser as mesmas pessoas mas em fases distintas da vida.
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No FB o que mais vejo são clientes do IKEA, teoricamente futuros clientes de Paços de Ferreira, a criticar a acção. E expondo o que vêem no IKEA e não nos móveis a sério: preço, falta de design, ...
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Por exemplo:
Comentário no FB.

Luís Monteiro Ventura -
"Qual é o fabricante em paços de ferreira que me vende um sofa de tres lugares ; onde posso escolher dez tonalidades de tecido, muda-las quando quiser, com 15 anos de garantia por 300€ ??? E que no meu caso acionei a garantia ao fim de 6 anos e deram-me um novo. Ja repararam que como eu existem milhares de pessoas a fazer publicidade gratuita ao Ikea ? Sabem qual é razão ? SATISFAÇÃO! Olhem os vossos "vizinhos" da industria de calçado, souberam muito bem dar a volta ao texto, são reconhecidos mundialmente e não andaram em campanhas de humor rasca para conquistarem mercado! Reenvitem-se sff. Criem dinâmica, criem imagem e digam: luis ventura em paços de ferreira tem o que gosta por mais 10€ do que no ikea. E eu estou a caminho..."

Ontem, na A1, ao vir de Coimbra vi uma quantidade de viadutos com pessoas que não tinham mais nada de interessante para fazerem do que ver outros a viverem a sua vida, os motards que vinham da concentração em Faro. Lembro-me sempre dessas pessoas quando encontro empresas mais preocupadas com a concorrência do que com os seus clientes.

Como é que a sua empresa se distingue?

"Competition has two faces. It can be a good thing - if you sell something very unusual, gaining a competitor is a powerful way to build credibility for your product category. You get to piggyback off their marketing, and the fact that there are two or more product choices gives customers confidence that other people are buying the product.
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But it is also dangerous, because it creates the risk that people will look at your product purely on price. If your customers start to compare you on price with competitive alternatives, you may have to reduce your price to beat theirs. They will be forced to cut their price to beat you and, ultimately you will both end up getting cheaper and cheaper until you have no profit left.
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To beat this, you need to distinguish your product from the competition so that customers can't easily compare your offering with theirs.
You might be able to do this by adding extra features to your product - though the competition may copy your features after a while. You can do it by using unusual package sizes so that customers have difficulty making a direct comparison - but you risk putting people off if they are used to buying the product in a specific size. And you can do it with specific offers, such as a money-back guarantee or extras such as a prize draw." 

Como é que a sua empresa se distingue?

Trecho retirado de "The Psychology of Price" de Leigh Caldwell

A propósito do aumento da concorrência

Depois, o problema é do euro...

"61-year tenure for average firm in 1958 narrowed to 25 years in 1980—to 18 years now.
A warning to execs: At current churn rate, 75% of the S&P 500 will be replaced by 2027."

"In 2011, a total of 23 companies were removed from the list, either due to declines in market value (for instance, Radio Shack’s stock no longer qualified as of June) or through an acquisition (for instance, National Semiconductor was bought by Texas Instruments in September). On average, an S&P 500 company is now being replaced about once every two weeks. And the churn rate of companies has been accelerating over time."

Trechos e imagens retirados daqui.

Biologia e economia

Um paralelismo que gosto sempre de fazer é o de relacionar biologia e economia. Para mim a economia é uma espécie de continuação da biologia (na biologia as espécies são hipóteses e as hipóteses morrem quando não se adaptam ao meio. Na economia as empresas são hipóteses que não necessitam necessariamente de morrer se se adaptarem às alterações do meio).
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Quando o meio se altera, e aparecem estirpes de hipóteses (empresas) com modelos de negócio mais bem adaptados, talvez a solução passe por apostar nas diferenças, em vez do choque frontal da concorrência directa.
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Uma exemplo sugestivo da flora:

"Ecologists have long been intrigued by the ways co-occurring species divide limiting resources. Such resource partitioning, or niche differentiation, may promote species diversity by reducing competition. Although resource partitioning is an important determinant of species diversity and composition in animal communities, its importance in structuring plant communities has been difficult to resolve. This is due mainly to difficulties in studying how plants compete for belowground resources. Here we provide evidence from a 15N-tracer field experiment showing that plant species in a nitrogen-limited, arctic tundra community were differentiated in timing, depth and chemical form of nitrogen uptake, and that species dominance was strongly correlated with uptake of the most available soil nitrogen forms. That is, the most productive species used the most abundant nitrogen forms, and less productive species used less abundant forms. To our knowledge, this is the first documentation that the composition of a plant community is related to partitioning of differentially
available forms of a single limiting resource."

E faço logo o paralelismo entre o "nitrogen uptake" e o preço do dinheiro... por exemplo. Hoje, com o dinheiro escasso e caro, muitas PMEs portuguesas ganham encomendas porque os compradores holandeses já não conseguem pagar o contentor a seis/sete meses de antecedência do recebimento das lojas.
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Trecho retirado de "Resource-based niches provide a basis for plant species diversity and dominance in arctic tundra".