A importância das "market frictions"

"the presence of firm-level heterogeneity implies the presence of various market frictions, like causal ambiguity and asset specificity/uniqueness.

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These market frictions interact to create the need for cost minimization, or the opportunity for value creation and value capture.

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We then apply the market-frictions logic to organizational boundary and economic rents questions to show how joining cost minimization, value creation, and value capture can be achieved through considering various market frictions. More generally, we maintain that it is useful to view market frictions as the fundamental building blocks of strategic management, and the analysis of new combinations of market frictions may provide new strategic insights."

As "market frictions" são o que cria as imperfeições de mercado, são o que gera a concorrência imperfeita. Sem imperfeições de mercado não há criação e captura de valor, só há lucros raquíticos e empobrecimento. Faz-me tanta impressão que estas coisas não sejam evidentes para a academia.

Recordar o lema deste blogue e do nosso trabalho:

• Promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas pornográficas (Março de 2021)
• "Perfect markets are for the poor" (Outubro de 2021)
• Promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas excessivas (Dezembro de 2021)
• Cartão de visita (Agosto de 2011)

Trechos retirados de "Market frictions as building blocks of an organizational economics approach to strategic management"

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"Why Companies Raise Their Prices: Because They Can"

"In 2021, US companies logged their most profitable year since the 1950s, as many took advantage of economies of scale and other more efficient production processes. Yet, firms increasingly held on to the savings they gained from these reduced costs, rather than passing them on to customers in the form of lower prices.

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markups—the difference between prices charged at checkout and the marginal costs incurred by a company in order to make a product—climbed about 25 percent between 2006 and 2019

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The researchers came to a startling conclusion: Consumers were 30 percent less price sensitive—meaning less likely to abandon favorite brands and seek cheaper equivalent products—in 2019 than they were in 2006.

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Meanwhile, company costs have declined over time as firms have squeezed more productivity out of increasingly efficient operations. Since 2006, marginal costs have dropped by 2.1 percent annually on average, the authors estimate. In the latter part of the study period, from 2017 to 2019, firm costs were about 25 percentage points lower versus 2006.

Rising markups come from either price increases or marginal cost reductions."

"Which Companies Can Raise Prices Without Angering Customers?"

"In all, we examined 846 large publicly traded corporations last year through the lens of 34 separate indicators in five categories: customer satisfaction, employee engagement and development, innovation, social responsibility and financial strength.
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To build our ranking, companies are compared in each of the five areas, as well as their overall effectiveness, through standardized scores with a typical range of 0 to 100 and a mean of 50.

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In our latest research, prompted by concerns over inflation, we explored the correlation between net profit margin-the percentage of profit a company produces from its total revenue-and customer satisfaction for 2021.

Of the 24 industries we looked at, 11 showed no meaningful statistical relationship between the two. Others, however, stood out. In six industries-household and personal products, autos, telecommunications, consumer services, banks and pharmaceuticals-there was a significant positive correlation between profit margin and customer satisfaction.

This means the two variables move in the same direction.

When one goes up, the other goes up; when one goes down, the other goes down. And it implies that, in general, firms in these industries have a fair bit of leeway to raise prices without making their customers disgruntled.

"We call this pricing power,'

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At the other end of the spectrum are companies in industries with a negative correlation between profit margin and customer satisfaction. Across these sectors, when net profit margin goes up, customer satisfaction goes down-and vice versa.
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What's more, any company with low customer satisfaction may well have trouble raising prices-regardless of the industry it's in. "It's a delicate calibration,""

"we look for an important asymmetry"

"In business competition, one cannot expect to make a profit without some source of advantage. We look for advantage in four basic places: in information, knowing something that others do not; in know-how, having a skill, or patent, that others do not have; in position, having a reputation, brand, or existing market system (for example, distribution, supply chains) that others cannot readily imitate or push aside; in efficiency, whether based on scale, technology, experience, or other factor that others cannot easily attain; and in the management of systems, whether bridging complexity or moving with speed and precision, that others do not have. In each case, we look for an important asymmetry, one that can be turned to advantage, between you and competitors"

Em busca de uma oportunidade para criar concorrência imperfeita.

Trecho retirado de "The Crux - How Leaders Become Strategists" de Richard P. Rumelt. 

Value from imperfection - Decommoditize

Há tempos criei um site para começar a alimentar o que dentro de anos poderá ser um mercado mais relevante para a minha actividade profissional. Chamei a esse site "Value From Imperfection".

Muitos perguntam-me o porquê deste nome.

Há minutos encontrei no Twitter uma boa introdução à explicação do nome:

Commodify is the shift from social to economic value (i.e. the first commercial instance of something)

Commoditise is the shift from imperfect to perfect competition (i.e. creation of a commodity or a utility market)

The two are very different. Don't mix them.

— Simon Wardley (@swardley) December 5, 2020

Reparem naquele "Commoditise is the shift from imperfect to perfect competition".

Quem são os meus clientes-alvo? PMEs industriais que procuram servir clientes com bens e serviços transaccionáveis. Estamos a falar de empresas que não podem competir pelo preço mais baixo, empresas que têm de arranjar outra vantagem competitiva que não o preço. Empresas que têm de subir na escala de valor, empresas que têm de fugir da comoditização: um mercado comoditizado é um mercado em que o que conta é o preço mais baixo. 

O que aprendi há anos e está ali ao lado na coluna das citações é: 

"When something is commoditized, an adjacent market becomes valuable"

Quando um mercado fica comoditizado entra a competência perfeita, reina a eficiência pura e dura, o sucesso é para quem é maior e consegue economias de escala. Recordo o maluco académico americano que até queria acabar com as marcas para promover a concorrência perfeita. Segundo ele, Camberlin, o valor de marcas como a Apple acontece por causa de ""ignorance" or the "imperfect knowledge" that results from "the reprehensible creation by businessmen of purely fictitious differences between products which are by nature fundamentally uniform"." 

Qualquer PME deve fugir da concorrência perfeita como o diabo da Cruz, daí a minha assinatura de anos: promotor da concorrência imperfeita e dos monopólios informais.

As PMEs devem estar sempre à procura das imperfeições no mercado, é delas que se pode retirar mais valor. Até porque é inevitável. A imperfeição de hoje mais tarde ou mais cedo deixa de ser mistério e transforma-se em algoritmo e reina a comoditização: