Market-driven ou market-driving (parte I)

O artigo "From market-driving to market-driven - An analysis of Benetton’s strategy change and its implications for long-term performance" de Raffaele Filieri e publicado por Marketing Intelligence & Planning Vol. 33 No. 3, 2015 pp. 238-257, merece ser lido para quem quer perceber porque, para além da subida dos custos na Ásia, o reshoring está a ocorrer. O artigo leva também a pensar que as empresas de calçado portuguesas que operam como market-driven nos mercados de proximidade, terão de operar como market-driving quando querem exportar para a Ásia ou Estados Unidos.

"The double-dip recession, the growth of low cost retailers, and the capability to rapidly satisfy ever changing consumer fashion needs are three different but intertwined factors which are reshaping the map of competition in the fashion industry. Today’s fashion market place is highly competitive and companies need to constantly “refresh” product ranges within a store to adapt to volatile fashion trends. Market-driven companies such as Zara and H&M seem to master this capability to match customer requirements in real time by offering trendy items at affordable prices.
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define market-driven management as the activity of “learning, understanding, and responding to stakeholder perceptions and behaviours within a given market structure”. Market driven refers to a business orientation that is based on understanding and reacting to the preferences and behaviours of customers within a given market structure through conducting market research and delivering incremental innovations. This orientation is strongly linked with the acquisition of information and knowledge about customers and competitors, which enable the firm to generate product innovation and to sustain a competitive advantage. The firms’ responsiveness to market needs depends on the propensity to act based on the knowledge acquired from the market
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the market-driven orientation does not guarantee a sustainable competitive advantage
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argued that the market-driven approach leaves the organization open to the tyranny of the served market in which managers see the world only through their current customers’ eyes. ... suggest that being market oriented detracts from innovation. To this regard, Christensen and Bower stated: “firms lose their position of industry leadership […] because they listen too carefully to their customers”. The common theme among the criticisms is that businesses pay a penalty for being market oriented. Likewise, while a strong market orientation is indicative of a propensity to innovate, it is not necessarily indicative of successful innovation. In order to induce changes in the behaviours of customers and competitors, simply being receptive to current market trends through market sensing abilities is not sufficient to sustain innovation.
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It has been suggested that in order to achieve a superior business performance, firms need to actively influence the market rather than being only ready to react to it. To shape the market, scholars have found that a market-driving orientation is better able than a market-driven orientation to gain a sustainable advantage by changing the structure or composition of a market and/or behaviours of its players.
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Innovation is a pre-requisite for creating customers and this is consistent with the “forward sensing” approach, in which market sensing is aimed to acquire state of the art knowledge which allows firms not only to be responsive but also to generate new concepts and ideas that alter the market structure. ... state that over time even successful market-driving firms change, as they should, into market-driven firms."

Dado vs variável

The industrial era was about making products. The post-industrial era is about making customers. Peter Drucker was right @rstraub46

— Esko Kilpi (@EskoKilpi) May 15, 2016

Aquele "about making customers" faz-me logo pensar naquela mudança de mindset: o mercado não é um dado, é uma variável. O mercado não existe objectivamente, o mercado é uma construção de uma rede de actores/agentes. Assumir que um mercado existe é assumir uma postura reactiva e perder a oportunidade de fazer a diferença

Cuidado com os fantasmas turísticos

Este artigo "Turismo de Portugal e INE vão estudar perfil dos turistas internacionais" deixa-me com um misto de sentimentos contraditórios.

"O primeiro passo passará por um inquérito ao turismo internacional, no período entre 2015 e 2016, para compreender aspectos como o perfil demográfico, gastos e motivos de deslocação dos visitantes estrangeiros e dos nacionais que viajam além-fronteiras.
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ainda faltam indicadores para conhecer melhor a procura e o seu impacto na economia nacional e, posteriormente, adoptar novas políticas."

Informação estatística é boa para perceber o impacte macro do que se está a fazer. No entanto, é perigosa para os actores da micro-economia que não fazem a sua parte, ou que acreditam em modelos do século XX.
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Em "Customer satisfaction in tourist destination: The case of tourism offer in the city of Naples" de Valentina Della Corte, Mauro Sciarelli, Clelia Cascella, Giovanna Del Gaudio, publicado por Journal of Investment and Management 2015; 4(1-1): 39-50 pode ler-se

"The importance of emotions in the consumer behavior models has increased significantly during the last few years.
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the experiential approach focuses on the affective and emotional component of the consumption process. The concept of “experience” is strictly connected with the entertainment aspect and implies the consumer participation and interaction during the product/service creation. Building an experience means bring the product/service to life and underline its identity through the sensorial involvement of the consumer.
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customer satisfaction can depend on a series of elements that belong to the subjective sphere of the customer and to the objective quality of the product/service experienced.
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Indeed, it can be easily noticed that the contemporary tourist wants to live a unique experience and is not interested anymore in purchasing a standardized product/service: in order to meet the new needs of the demand, the tourist destinations must give top priority to the achievement of tourist satisfaction."

Um mundo de emoções, de subjectividade, de experiências, de particular.
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Qual é o problema da estatística num mundo de emoções?

"Appealing to mass markets usually results in dilution of experience because it needs to appeal to the lowest common denominator."

Os fantasmas estatísticos, a miudagem.
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Ainda, nas palavras de Lior Arussy em "Passionate and profitable : why customer strategies fail and ten steps to do them right":

"Companies that seek lasting, sustainable, differentiating attributes must reexamine their employees’ experiences to determine how to build human driven attributes into their value proposition consistently. This goes beyond the tired old story of the one employee who dared to break the rules. This is about building an entire operation of rule breakers. It requires a different culture and conditions for such behavior to be nourished and cultivated.
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[Moi ici: Depois, acerca do efeito das médias e da estatística] "*When you view different customers differently, you can create better, more suitable experiences for customers, as opposed to sinking to the lowest common denominator. *Customized services based on emotions and aspirations should allow you better connection and communication with customers. *There are more opportunities out there to deliver more value (and charge for it) to customers. *Viewing your business from the customer’s perspective opens up new ideas for additional services."

Continuo a crer que a maioria dos empresários do sector ou, pelo menos, os que têm acesso mais facilitado aos media, continuam com o locus de controlo no exterior. Então o governo é que tem de decidir se quer um turismo de qualidade ou não?
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À espera de uma promoção feita pelo governo que nunca poderá fazer por eles aquilo que só eles podem fazer, deixar de serem market-driven e passarem a ser market driving, sim, passarem a procurar moldar e criar o seu próprio mercado, não focando-se na objectividade mas nas experiências dos turistas, dos clientes... scripting markets.
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"INE e Turismo de Portugal cooperam para conhecer melhor os turistas"

Cuidado com os algoritmos

Excelente metáfora de Seth Godin sobre o fim das relações entre um cliente de longa data e o seu fornecedor:
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"Not fade away"
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Ontem, relia Storbacka e Lehtinen em "Customer Relationship Management":
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"Up to 75% of customers who switch providers say that they were "satisfied" or even "very satisfied" with the previous provider.
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Traditionally, loyal customers have been assumed to be more profitable than other customers.
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Cutomer base analyses indicate that a large share of customer relationships are unprofitable regardless of their duration. These analyses also show that loyal but unprofitable customers do not become more profitable over time unless relationship revenue can be increased or relationship structure is altered to cut relationship costs.
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Thus, if we accept that satisfied customers are not necessarily loyal and that loyal customers are not necessarily profitable, we can conclude that the best way to start improving the value of a relationship is to focus on the actual purchase behavior of customers.
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The less important a product is, the more important encounter-related issues are."
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De certa forma, relaciono isto com "Markets vs Customer Driven Business Model Design", acredito que temos de nos concentrar, à partida, num grupo de práticas-alvo que geram certas experiências que grupos de clientes-alvo procuram e valorizam. Contudo, depois, todo o trabalho tem de ser feito individualmente, cliente-a-cliente. Assim, que confiarmos em algoritmos ... como os bancos o fizeram, we're doomed!

Drive markets

Interessante o relato deste exemplo da criação espontânea de um mercado na Suécia "Phases of spontaneous market making" retirado do artigo "How Are Markets Made?" de Patrik Aspers.
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No entanto, a reflexão sobre o que se lhe pode seguir... a criação organizada de um mercado, por pelo menos 2 actores, não fica atrás.
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"I have already indicated that spontaneous making is, in one sense, analytically prior to organized making. In other words, organized making presupposes what it is supposed to explain, namely the market. It is in light of organized market making that we should consider the notion of performativity. The literature has described market formation processes in which actors somehow come together and fashion an existing market, or set up a new market. The argument is that the construction of a market is mapped on an existing model, which is used as a blueprint in the process of changing or constructing real market."
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O meu interesse reside na opção que uma PME tem de tentar criar um novo mercado, tentar alterar as regras de um mercado simplesmente alterando a sua forma de se relacionar com outros intervenientes na cadeia da procura.
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Isto nem sempre é fácil... muitos olham para o mercado não como uma variável que se pode tentar alterar em nosso favor, mas como um dado do problema, uma condição imposta. Assim, acabam por se auto-limitar, por se auto-censurar, por reduzir as hipóteses de sucesso futuro.
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Um mercado tem actores e tem regras. Os actores aparecem e desaparecem. As regras, essas são vistas como mais imutáveis, são tidas como regulamentos impostos por um governo ou entidade para nivelar o terreno. OK, o papel de uma PME é, de modo legal, leal e justo, tudo fazer para desnivelar o terreno em seu favor, oferecendo um serviço diferente ou mais barato ou oferecendo um modelo de negócio mais atraente.
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E um modelo de negócio mais atraente pode simplesmente mudar um mercado por completo...
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A forma como se olha para o mercado é fundamental para esta predisposição para tentar modificar as regras do mercado, sem influência de governos, a tal performativity.
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Bernard Jaworski, Ajay K. Kohli e Arvind Sahay em "Market-Driven Versus Driving Markets", publicado pelo Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science January 2000 vol. 28 no. 1 45-54 expõem bem o desafio.

E mais uma vez voltamos ao problema de estar tão, mas tão orientado para o mercado que em vez de se ter pensamento estratégico próprio, tratam-se todos os clientes por igual, aceitam-se os mercados como dados do problema, não se fazem escolhas, não se diz não.