Acerca do pricing

• "The Price is Complicated"

"Many chains use a cost-plus approach. That is, prices are based on food costs plus a labor charge and an overhead factor. The problem with cost-plus pricing is that it is a short-term, inside-out approach. Not only does it leave you vulnerable to variability in commodities pricing, but it also doesn’t reflect the full margin potential of your offerings. Customers may be willing to pay more for some items, but cost-plus pricing essentially treats all products the same. Pricing should be decided from the outside in.
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You should approach pricing as thoughtfully and strategically as your menu.
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Reinforce your brand identity. Use price to communicate what your brand stands for.
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Be clear about your competitive positioning. Don’t be afraid to charge more if you’re competing on quality, exclusivity, or a superior experience.
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Vary price to emphasize brand differentiation and value. Variable pricing draws attention to the value you offer or to the one dimension that most meaningfully differentiates you from competitors.
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Vary price to target customer segments.
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Anchor your pricing. Price anchoring uses cues to set the customer’s expectations.
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Pricing is too important to be made as an arbitrary decision. And just because consumers have cut back on spending doesn’t mean pricing is simply a game of  “how low can you go.” With a strategic approach, you can use price as a helpful tool in your brand-building toolbox."

• "10 Classic Studies on Pricing Psychology" 

"1. Similarity Can Cost You Sales...
Sometimes marketing (and pricing) needs to help customers get the difference between products, because as it turns out, too many options can be demotivating to consumers.
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if two similar items are priced the same, consumers are much less likely to buy one than if their prices are even slightly different.
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2. Utilizing Price AnchoringWhat's the best way to sell a $2,000 watch? Right next to a $10,000 watch!
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By placing premium products and services near standard options you can create a clear sense of value for potential customers, who will then view your less expensive options as a bargain in comparison.
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3. The Secrets of Weber's Law...
the just noticeable difference between two stimuli is directly proportional to the magnitude of the stimuli.
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4. Reduce Pain Points in the Sales ProcessAccording to neuroeconomics experts, the human brain is wired to "spend 'til it hurts."
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Reframe the product's value.
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Bundle commonly bought items.
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Sweat the small stuff.
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Appeal to utility or pleasure.
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It's either free or it isn't.
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5. Try Out an Old ClassicEnding prices with the number 9 is one of the oldest pricing methods in the book...
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6. Emphasize Time Spent vs. Saved...
study shows that consumers tend to recall more positive memories of a product when they are asked to remember time spent with the product over the money they saved.
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7. Never Compare Prices Without a Reason...
the act of comparative pricing can cause unintended effects in consumer evaluations if there is no context for why prices should be compared.
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The focus should be on why prices are cheaper, not just that they are.
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8. Utilize the Power of Context...
Where you buy is just as important as what you buy.
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9. Test Different Levels of Pricing...
Some customers are always going to want the most expensive option, so adding a super-premium price will give them that option and will make your other prices look better by comparison.
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10. Keep Prices Stupidly Simple"

• "Improving Your Sales Through Strategic Pricing" 

"Let the consumer – not your competition – determine the value of your product and remember that it is much easier to lower your price after a product launch than it is to raise it down the line."

• "Steal These Tips On The Power of Effective Pricing"

"no great companies can be all things to all people; you have to choose what sort of organization you are-- and exactly what value you're delivering. They divide the world in three: Are you primarily a product company? a customer-service driven operation? or an operationally efficient enterprise?
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Until you decide what kind of company you are, you can't develop an effective pricing strategy. Product-oriented companies can command premium prices because they deliver truly distinctive goods and services. Customer-centric companies have to be middle-of-the pack in their pricing, though they can command a degree of a premium based on outstanding service. Companies grounded in operational efficiency present a value-based model, and so must price themselves below the midpoint. What are you? You can be some of all three. But you have to major on one."

• "A Penny Saved: Psychological Pricing" 
• "19 Pricing Strategies for Your Business to Try"
• "The Psychology of Pricing: A Gigantic List of Strategies"

Curiosidade do dia

"As exportações portuguesas de bens para Espanha cresceram 10,1% nos primeiros quatro meses do ano, para um total de 3.468 milhões de euros, indicou à Lusa a delegação de Madrid da AICEP.
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As manufacturas de consumo (têxteis e confecção, calçado, brinquedos, joalharia e outros produtos de consumo) representam 18% do total e registaram um acréscimo de 11,7% (mais 65 milhões de euros).
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Os bens de equipamento cresceram 12,1% e o sector automóvel aumentou 10,8%."

Trechos retirados de "Exportações de bens de Portugal para Espanha cresceram 10% até Abril"

"Portugal exportou para Espanha quatro milhões de euros por dia em serviços nos três primeiros meses do ano, num total de 364 milhões de euros, indicam dados provisórios do Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE) espanhol.
Este valor representa um aumento de 3,3% face ao mesmo período do ano anterior."

Trecho retirado de "Portugal exportou para Espanha 4 milhões de euros em serviços por dia"

Ponto da situação

Ontem ao princípio da noite, um desafio do @pauloperes permitiu desenhar esta figura, para sistematizar o nosso progresso:

Um JTBD e vários contextos possíveis (recordar link "Não começar sem saber qual o trabalho e o contexto seleccionado")
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A unidade de análise é a combinação JTBD e um contexto concreto.
O serviço prestado por uma organização é contratado pelo cliente para realizar um trabalho na sua vida, no âmbito de um certo contexto, para atingir um resultado (outcome).
Falamos de resultado (outcome) como uma consequência na vida do cliente, como um benefício, como uma experiência procurada e valorizada. Não falamos de ouput, não falamos de uma coisa concreta que é transaccionada e que tem especificações independentemente do cliente concreto. O cliente não procura a coisa, o objecto, o produto! O cliente procura o que a coisa faz na sua vida.
A coisa, o objecto, o produto transaccionado, é um recurso processado pelo cliente na sua vida para produzir o benefício, a experiência procurada.
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Durante esse trabalho o cliente vai sentir resistências e problemas (barreiras). Por exemplo, porque não tem o know-how ou a paciência, para tirar o melhor partido dos recursos que lhe são disponibilizados. A monitorização do progresso, durante a realização do trabalho, pode dar força para seguir em frente, criando uma espécie de espiral de motivação positiva:

"People don’t want just the outcomes; they want the progress outcomes represent."

Recordei os objectivos proximais, para vencer as barreiras.
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O olhar para trás no fim é o sublinhado a amarelo daqui:

"When you design for outcomes, you’re designing for your customers’s future past — the moment, at some end, when they look back and evaluate."

Como Kahneman e Gigerenzer escrevem, o que recordamos das experiências não é o mesmo que o que sentimos durante a sua vivência inicial. Há aqui qualquer coisa de Damásio?

Falta incluir a co-criação na primeira figura.

Perguntas críticas cheias de sumo

Uma lista de perguntas críticas cheias de sumo:

"WHO are you trying to reach? (If the answer is 'everyone', start over.)
HOW will they become aware of what you have to offer?
WHAT story are you telling/living/spreading?
DOES that story resonate with the worldview these people already have? (What do they believe? What do they want?)
WHERE is the fear that prevents action?
WHEN do you expect people to take action? If the answer is 'now', what keeps people from saying, 'later'? It's safer that way.
WHY? What will these people tell their friends?"

Texto retirado de "Every marketing challenge revolves around these questions"

Para reflexão

"Yet the future is about more than just technology. Health and economic trends, population growth and climate change, just to name a few, will also create massive challenges—and massive opportunities. The time to prepare for the future is always the present.
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Most executives are busy people. We embed ourselves into the networks of our companies and industries. So, not surprisingly, the issues we spend the most time thinking about are focused on the present - customer demands, competitive moves, supply chain snafus and the like.
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Yet Dr. Canton urges managers to take a broader view. How do they see their business in 20 years?
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Yet look 20 years ahead and the concerns are quite different.
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A big part of his job is not only getting his clients to see that these issues exist, but to prepare them to take effective action.
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So to become truly future ready, trendwatching and analysis are necessary, but not sufficient. Leaders today need to act.
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“you need shape your future before someone else does. Those that lack the courage to predict and shape their future may become victims of an unwelcome destiny.”

E na sua empresa, quem pensa no futuro?
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Trechos retirados de "To Prepare For The Future You Need To Shape It—Or Someone Else Will"

Quantas vezes?

Um exemplo concreto deste postal "Prisioneiros das rotinas..." neste artigo "The story of the invention that could revolutionize batteries—and maybe American manufacturing as well". Meio incrédulo dei comigo a ler:

"The reason battery factories are so huge ... goes back to a chance event at the birth of lithium ion.
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But Sony also had to quickly figure out how to manufacture this new kind of battery on a commercial scale. Providence stepped in: As it happened, increasingly popular compact discs were beginning to erode the market for cassette tapes, of which Sony was also a major manufacturer. The tapes were made on long manufacturing lines that coated a film with a magnetic slurry, dried it, cut it into long strips, and rolled it up. Looking around the company, Sony’s lithium-ion managers now noticed much of this equipment, and its technicians, standing idle.
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It turned out that the very same equipment could also be used for making lithium-ion batteries. These too could be made by coating a slurry on to a film, then drying and cutting it. In this case the result isn’t magnetic tape, but battery electrodes.
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This equipment, and those technicians, became the backbone of the world’s first lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant, and the model for how they have been made ever since. Today, factories operating on identical principles are turning out every commercial lithium-ion battery on the planet."

Interessante como nunca ninguém questionou a dimensão das fábricas, os pressupostos, apesar das centenas de milhões de dólares, até arrepia.
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Quantas vezes isto acontece na vida das empresas?
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BTW, ao ler a parte final do artigo:

"In a new report, McKinsey describes a broad new age of manufacturing that it calls Industry 4.0. The consulting firm says the changes under way are affecting most businesses. They are probably not “another industrial revolution,” it says, but together, there is “strong potential to change the way factories work.”
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For decades, the US has watched its bedrock manufacturing industries wither  away, as they’ve instead grown thick in Japan, in South Korea, in China, Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the US lost about 5 million manufacturing jobs just from 1997 to 2014. This includes the production of lithium-ion batteries, which, though invented by Americans, were commercialized in Japan and later South Korea and China.
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So Chiang’s innovation could be a poster-child for a new strain of thinking in the US. This says that, while such industries are not likely to return from Asia, the US can possibly reinvent how they manufacture. The country wouldn’t take back nearly as many jobs as it has lost. But there could be large profits, as the country once again moves a step ahead in crucial areas of technology."

Não pude deixar de recordar "Mais especulações"

Curiosidade do dia

"Uma das promessas do euro, em particular para os países mais fracos, era a de dar maiores garantias e reforçar a confiança, promovendo maior estabilidade e prosperidade. Hoje, demasiados países do euro estão confrontados com o contrário. Isto é, com serem obrigados a fazerem um esforço maior para conseguirem financiar-se e manter a confiança, exactamente por estarem no euro. Uma moeda comum limita a margem de manobra. Mas uma moeda comum devia reforçar a confiança, sendo especialmente benéfica para os países mais fracos. A gestão que as instituições europeias fizeram da crise, enterrou essa promessa. A pertença ao euro deixou de ser um valor, para passar a ser um fardo, que contribuiu para afundar de forma mais forte os países mais vulneráveis. A pertença ao euro deixou de ser uma vantagem, para ser apenas algo que devemos manter porque os custos de saída seriam muito elevados."

Fico sempre intrigado com a qualidade dos alunos formatados por estes professores:

Para estes formatadores bom é haver inflação, é destruir poder de compra na ilusão monetária, Já viver dentro dos limites da sustentabilidade da riqueza criada é que não dá.

Trecho retirado de "A Grécia, Portugal e as promessas europeias"

Várias formas diferentes de facturar

Um texto simples e eficaz a explicar três formas diferentes de facturar:

• com base nas entradas, com base na quantidade de trabalho;
• com base em saídas concretas; ou
• com base nos resultados, nos benefícios.

Em "The Outcomes Business".
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E com base na experiência proporcionada?
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E com base no progresso do cliente? (Recordar a ideia da Amazon começar a pagar aos autores com base no número de páginas lidas)
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Nem todos os clientes estarão disponíveis para todas estas formas de facturar.
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Não basta escolher a sua forma de facturar, é preciso conciliá-la com a preferência ou tolerância do cliente.

Por sua conta e risco - foi avisado

Aviso retirado de "Why You Really Shouldn’t Mess with Price-Buyers", capítulo V de "How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitors Winning Every Sale at Full Price, Rate, or Fee Lawrence L. Steinmetz, e William T. Brooks.

"Salespeople who are the most successful don’t mess with price-buyers. That’s right - they know when not to sell and to whom not to sell.
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There’s probably not an experienced salesperson anywhere in the world who hasn’t had the unhappy experience of accepting an order from a prospect and, after the fact, wishing that he or she had never even met the new customer. [Moi ici: The winner's curse] One of the most difficult things for salespeople to understand is that the pure price-buyer is devoted to one fundamental, singleminded proposition: “You are not going to make any money on me.
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Period.” Therefore, it is incredibly foolhardy for any salesperson to waste time trying to sell to someone with that mind-set. The pure price-buyer is going to squeeze every drop of blood out of you and your organization before they place the order. [Moi ici: O "price-buyer" honesto compra um produto standard, um produto maduro. A compra deve ser rápida, fácil e sem complicações] There’s nothing more professionally disgusting than seeing a salesperson trying to cajole an order out of someone who simply has no intention of allowing anyone but himself to “make a buck.”
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1. Pure price-buyers take all your sales time.
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2. They do all the complaining.
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3. They forget to pay you.
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4. They tell your other prospects or customers how little they paid you.
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5. They drive of f your good customers.
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6. They’re not going to buy from you again, anyway.
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7. They require you to “invest up” to supply their needs - and they blackmail you for yet a lower price.
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8. They destroy the credibility of your price and your product or service in the eyes of the end users.
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9. They steal any ideas, designs, drawings, intellectual property, information, and knowledge they can get their hands on."

Marxianismo entranhado

A realidade relatada neste artigo "The Ethics of Pricing for Value" é comum nas PME, também. Foram décadas e décadas de formatação mental, de marxianismo entranhado:

"What always strikes me in these trainings, is the difficulty of researchers to fully understand the key concept of value. This difficulty becomes most apparent in the discussion of pricing issues. When I say that a health service (e.g., some type of
diagnosis) should be priced according to the value it offers to the consumer, I always get pushed back by participants arguing that even when the value of the service is big, it is unethical to charge, e.g., 600 for something that costs only 150."

"We have shifted from..."

À atenção da tríade e de todos aqueles que aprenderam microeconomia nos anos 50/60.

"How well do you know your customers? This seems to be a key question on the minds of not just marketers, but company strategists these days. We have shifted from a competitive landscape in which companies are more exclusively focused on external forces affecting their industries and sectors, to one that has become significantly more customer centric. [Moi ici: Idiossincrasia rules!!!] This intensive customer focus has increased as technology-enabled transparency and online social media accelerate an inexorable flow of market power downstream from suppliers to customers. Now, every company of any scale and in any sector wants to be closer to its customers, to understand them more deeply, and to tailor their products and services to serve them more precisely."

Os que foram formatados, e continuam a formatar outros, segundo o modelo do século XX não percebem esta realidade.

"Graças te dou, ó Pai, Senhor dos céus e da terra, pois escondeste estas coisas dos sábios e cultos, e as revelaste aos pequeninos." (Mateus 11, 25) 

Trecho retirado de "How IBM, Intuit, and Rich Products Became More Customer-Centric"

Curiosidade do dia

Ao longo dos anos os sinais não eram famosos:

• Descer na escala de valor (Outubro de 2013)
• Até teria vergonha desse feito (Setembro de 2011)

Agora, "Bimbo compra Panrico mas não quer o pão de forma":

"O que se sabe é que a aquisição deixa de fora o negócio de pão de forma da Panrico. Apesar da Bimbo, conhecida por este tipo de panificação, querer a Panrico, também conhecida pela mesma produção, este produto não será comprado. A opção é uma forma de evitar problemas junto da Concorrência espanhola, segundo avança o jornal espanhol Expansión. O objectivo da Bimbo é o de que o pão de forma Panrico seja comprado por outra empresa."

Uma espécie de Font Salem a caminho?

Não precisamos de ser bruxos, basta analisar a informação que se vai lendo pelos jornais e confrontá-la com o que se aprende na prática, nos livros e na reflexão.
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E a sua empresa, também está numa de descida na escala de valor?

Algo que a tríade ainda não percebeu

"Scale isn’t what it used to be. It’s never been easier to start a company, and as a result new entrants are unbundling incumbents’ businesses and chipping away at their advantage. Upstarts ... decomposing markets into highly customized niches so that the incumbents can’t compete on scale alone. And by now it’s clear that these companies are well positioned to achieve greater success than originally envisioned, and may displace many of the Fortune 500 brands over the next decade or two. It’s also clear that this is an economy-wide phenomenon. The playing field is being leveled across a variety of industries:
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There are companies attempting to redefine customer experiences in almost every industry including education, healthcare, and financial services.
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Today’s innovative companies also run the risk of being  disrupted by a new generation of nimble upstarts that will use the very same unbundled business model to their advantage. [Moi ici: Recordar a previsão acerca das plataformas de 2ª geração] Businesses will need to persistently focus on product and customer success, because for most firms scale isn’t a moat any more.
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Still, the lessons for businesses are relatively simple. For incumbents: you can’t count on scale like you used to. For entrepreneurs: rent scale where you can, and focus on product design above all else."

O mundo mudou e muita gente, sobretudo membros da tríade, continua a pensar como quando tinha vinte anos, e se vivia no Normalistão do século XX.
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Claro que num país de incumbentes, esta nova realidade fluída e muito mais volátil deixa sempre uma especial sensação de mal-estar.

Trechos retirados de "Why Startups Are More Successful than Ever at Unbundling Incumbents"

Dimensão e especialização no Estranhistão

""o facto de a grande maioria delas [PME de construção] ser de carácter regional, o que provou que tinham a dimensão adequada e, por isso, conseguiram sobreviver; e porque eram e são empresas especialistas, que estão focadas em nichos de mercado"."

Primeiro, acerca da dimensão, recordar:

• ""the mindset of extracting and the alternative of feeding""

O sucesso não é necessariamente crescer e crescer muito depressa. Recordar também:

Segundo, acerca de serem especialistas, recordar:

• "Ter uma estratégia clara = escolhas claras = ideias claras = desejar sucesso à concorrência" 

Está lá o "desejar sucesso à concorrência", quando se é especialista, existem n especialidades, com n com tendência a crescer com o tempo, como as espécies de insectos. Diferentes especialidades não concorrem entre si porque estão em campeonatos diferentes.

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Entretanto, Mintzberg escreveu recentemente "Win-Winning in a Collaborative World":

"Don’t get me wrong. I am not calling for an end to competition, even if that were possible. What we need is an end to is the winner-take-all mentality - some people having to be bigger, faster, richer, more powerful at the expense of  many other people, and, ultimately, themselves. We shall have to balance competition with cooperation."

Recordar também:

"Os ginásios com mais de um clube (cadeias) registam maiores perdas de clientes que os independentes (um único clube); de forma surpreendente, os clubes independentes que não possuem vantagens de escala, têm recursos mais escassos e menor facilidade de crédito que as cadeias, são mais resistentes e conseguem obter melhores resultados também na variação da facturação” 

O exemplo dos rouxinóis de McArthur é fundamental para a economia:

 Texto inicial retirado de "PME da construção resistiram melhor que o resto do sector"

Renunciar, tão difícil

Se recordarmos o teste básico de Roger Martin, para avaliar se se está perante uma verdadeira estratégia ou não, teste que permite concluir "Assim, talvez ter inimigos entre os clientes ou ex-clientes seja bom sinal", é fundamental o foco estratégico. É fundamental saber escolher e, sobretudo saber renunciar. Porque ao escolher uma orientação estratégica que parece válida, está-se automaticamente a renunciar a outras que também podem ser trabalhadas por outros.
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Em 2008 sublinhámos aqui:

"the most important orders are the ones to which a company says 'no'."

Em quase todos os projectos em que me envolvo sinto esta dificuldade dos empresários, de renunciar, de dizer não a clientes honestos e com dinheiro. Por isso, é fundamental sublinhar "Strategy Is About What You Don’t Do":

"Strategy is what allows you to say “no” to the things you shouldn’t do.
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Most people think of “strategy” as the guiding principle for what they and their business do - a  roadmap that defines who they are and where they’re headed. Most people don’t approach a strategy  offsite thinking that they’ll be spending time talking about where their business isn’t heading. But it’s important to remember that good strategy work allows you to have an effective framework for  making decisions about what you don’t want to be doing as well as what you do intend to do.
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It’s critically important to make sure you create a strategy that can be used in this way. It’s easy to get carried away in strategy work and create something so broad and overreaching that pretty much anything you can think of could theoretically be “on strategy.” The single most common reason for company failure - and this is true whether your business is an app company or providing some social service half way across the world - is lack of focus.
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Knowing what you don’t do is just as important (perhaps even more important) than what you do do."

Exemplos da dinâmica do capitalismo

Ontem, li dois textos que são excelentes exemplos da dinâmica do capitalismo.
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Primeiro, a destruição criativa, "Delicious Creative Destruction":

"When one particular use of resources proves to be insufficiently productive – when one particular use of resources fails to satisfy consumers sufficiently – when one particular use of resources is revealed by market competition to cost more than the value that that use of resources generates for consumers – that particular use of resources is ended. That particular use of resources is “destroyed” by market forces so that those resources can be used in ways that produce greater value for consumers.
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Importantly, the “destruction” that occurs in the process of creative destruction is not physical destruction at all. The great physical destroyer of resources (and lives) is war, which is the main and core speciality of the state. Markets, in stark contrast to governments, are peaceful. The “destruction” that they constantly unleash is creative: it’s a process of moving scarce, productive resources from uses that satisfy consumers less to use that satisfy consumers more.
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And when Pizza Hut shut down this restaurant, it did not raze the building to the ground. Nor did it trash most of the booths that are inside of this building. No. Those resources were transferred peacefully and voluntarily to another entrepreneur who, recombining them with other resources, now uses this building and its booths to offer to consumers a product different from the one that was offered there before. It’s a product that consumers are – daily – free to accept or to reject. If Pizza Hut were protected from competition – which is to say, protected from the consequences of consumer choice – that particular building might still be operating as a Pizza Hut. But consumers would be worse off as a result. The wealth of the nation would be lower."

Claro que neste país de incumbentes esta dinâmica é mal vista.
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Recordar:

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Segundo, este outro texto, "Taking the Work Out of Short-Term Rentals", salienta outra característica. Surge um novo mercado e, logo, rapidamente aparece um ecossistema, uma constelação de negócios, de empresas que vão realizar trabalhos associados a novas situações:

"A fledgling industry has sprung up in the last five years offering to take the work out of short-term rentals, for a fee. Start-ups with names like Guesty, Flatbook, onefinestay and proprly will do everything from greeting guests with the keys to swapping out your cowboy-print polyester sheets for natural linens. Some allow you to book services like cleanings and key exchanges à la carte.Others take the entire rental process out of your hands, dealing with bookings, storing your belongings and cleaning up after the guests go home in exchange for as much as half of your revenue. A few will even dispatch a team of decorators to your apartment."

Gostei muito deste texto.
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Claro que neste país apareceriam logo umas providências cautelares, lançadas por alguns incumbentes.

Curiosidade do dia

E quando o mundo muda?

"building the business is often the easy part. Growing and maintaining the business can be much tougher and figuring out how to appeal to new consumers is no small feat.
One reason is that consumers are far from homogeneous. Different segments have different risk tolerances, ways of making decisions, and — perhaps most challenging for growing businesses — preferences for when and how they adopt innovations."

Retirei este trecho de um artigo com o título "Focus On the Customers You Want, Not the Ones You Have"
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E quando o mundo muda e uma empresa precisa de mudar de clientes-alvo, de geografia de actuação, de tipo de oferta, de proposta de valor, de modelo de negócio?
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Por exemplo, quando vou para o centro de Gaia, chego de comboio às Devesas e subo até ao jardim Soares dos Reis. Pelo caminho, vejo um ginásio numa cave, há anos era uma loja chinesa. Os vidros estão cobertos com fotos de jovens de ambos os sexos, erguendo pesos e realçando a sua musculação.
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Penso sempre neste gráfico:

E na demografia europeia, sendo Portugal um dos países mais envelhecido da Europa.
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E penso nas razões porque os europeus não fazem exercício físico:

E interrogo-me porque é que nunca vi um ginásio dedicado explicitamente ao sector sénior?
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Têm dimensão, têm tempo livre, têm poder de compra, têm um trabalho concreto por realizar (recuperar/manter e prolongar qualidade de vida, autonomia, autoestima, ...)
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BTW, o preço é o sexto motivo! Não é nem o primeiro, nem o segundo, nem o terceiro.

Que tipo de relação?

"co-creation is a function of interaction. Consequently, direct and indirect interaction lead to different forms of value creation and co-creation; co-creation can occur only when two or more parties influence one another.
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“Since customer relationships do not all have the same value-creation potential, they can at worst tie up customer and provider resources that could have been used to create value in more efficient ways. From the provider’s perspective, it is therefore vital to review them, and identify how to allocate resources in such a way as to enhance the interactions and consequent value creation. From the customer’s perspective, it makes no sense to allocate resources to collaboration with a provider whose offerings focus mainly on value-in-exchange if it is possible to derive more value-in-use from a similar collaboration with a more competitive provider.”
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As Grönroos points out, not all customers want to engage in relationships with their suppliers. Hence, even if the Nordic School emphasises mutual value creation, it does not assume that relationship investments and interactions will per se increase customer value, or that relationship marketing is a panacea for competitive advantage. Overall, however, I would argue that the main challenge for companies is not the lack of arm’s-length relationships. Quite the contrary: the excessive and endemic short-term orientation of the actors (including customers and shareholders) inhibits value creation and competitive advantage at both company and value-constellation level."

Que tipo de relação é a mais adequada para construir um posicionamento diferenciador? Que tipo de cliente, que tipo de trabalho e em que contexto?

Trechos retirados de "Business Markewting– A Nordic School Perspective" de  Christian Kowalkowski

Não começar sem saber qual o trabalho e o contexto seleccionado

"They have a job to get done.
Your product gets hired to solve that job. That’s what causes purchase and use.
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I am hungry and I have 15 minutes to eat lunch at work. That’s the job.
I hire a sandwich from the deli in the lobby of my building.
My hunger at work, with only 15 minutes to spare, caused me to purchase at the deli.
Did my age, martial status, viewing habbits, number of kids, gender, cause me to purchase? No. These are attributes of a buyer that might be correlated to purchase but don’t cause purchase.
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Same type of job, hunger, but different situation and different hiring criteria.
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For the job, the situation is critical. [Moi ici: O contexto] As Clayton Christensen says: “the customer is the wrong unit of analysis.” It’s the job in a situation.
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Also, the job is stable over time. I’m repeatedly hungry, but in different situations. The solutions you choose to hire change. This is critical to your differentiation efforts.
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There is a job that we want to get done. That causes us to purchase.
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Don’t start your segmentation, development, messaging or much of anything until you know the job to be done.
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emphasize the need to understand what will cause the customer to buy, not what is correlated.
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If you don’t know the job in the situation, stop. You are wasting time and money and you probably don’t even know it. You need to improve upon the job someone is trying to get done. Make it easier, more convenient or less expensive.
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How you frame a market determines how you serve it. The job to be done is the frame. That’s the market, the job in the situation. Getting it right will trim your list of features, relieve some of the pressure on the development team, and give you confidence to decide what NOT to include in the product.
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Understand and uncover the emotional jobs associated with a functional job. The Re-Wired Group calls this the “forces” and the emotional energy people use when using, buying or switching to a product/service. Progress hindering forces could include loss aversion, cognitive load (also called cognitive miser), sunk cost effect, social bias comparison, choice paradox, endowment effect (also called divestiture aversion) and many more.
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Deeply understanding the job to be done in that situation is the starting point for how to frame, design and deliver the complete solution….that will cause that person to buy."

Trechos retirados de "This Causes People to Purchase"