"Such volatility highlights the folly of strategic inertia or, worse, managerial hubris"

“Overcoming myopia begins with situating the organisation and its transactional environment within the broader context of society. Such a perspective recognises the deeper causal relationships that enable and drive industry dynamics and outcomes. Understanding what these causal relationships are, how they might change and how they could affect future operating dynamics is the essence of scenario planning.
.
The transactional environment is the arena in which the organisation participates, where the perceived value or benefits it creates are exchanged to satisfy perceived wants and needs. The organisation has an immediate relationship with this environment. The actions of industry stakeholders can have a direct influence on the organisation; and through its policies and actions, the organisation can exert direct influence on industry outcomes. Actors within this environment include customers, employees, distributors, suppliers, regulators, competitors, unions and other relevant participants

The dynamics of the transactional environment are invariably enabled or driven by factors beyond the industry’s boundaries. Within this broader social environment are the deeper, less obvious factors influencing industry dynamics, including demographics, social values, technology, climate, legislation, employment levels and interest rates.
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Together these factors evolve, interact and combine to provide a shifting and dynamic context for the organisation’s operations. At any given time, a unique mix of factors is interacting to produce a particular operating context. And as changes occur across each of these factors, this mix changes, shaping the attitudes, behaviours, wants and needs of society, and ultimately influencing the benefits customers seek from your business 

This shifting contextual dynamic serves up a series of ongoing strategic fitness tests where the corporate challenge is to remain in alignment with the environment. Such volatility highlights the folly of strategic inertia or, worse, managerial hubris, a point well made by Theodore Levitt in his classic article ‘Marketing Myopia’. ‘In truth, there is no such thing as a growth industry,’ he argued. ‘There are only companies organized and operated to create and capitalize on growth opportunities. Industries that assume themselves to be riding some automatic growth escalator invariably descend into stagnation.’[Moi ici: Lembra-se da malta que espera a boleia da maré?]
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By instead adopting a contextual outlook, historical trends, and the forecasts based on these trends, are put into perspective. You are able to look at your historical performance, not from the position of absolute outcomes and trends, but from the deeper perspective of underlying drivers and conditions that led to those outcomes. The result is an appreciation for society’s fluency and a broader outlook towards the future.”

Trecho de Steve Tighe retirado de “Rethinking Strategy”

"niche retailers with strong identities" (parte II)

Parte I.

Um exemplo do que quero dizer quando defendo que o futuro das plataformas não é winner-take-all, "Bitchute".

Trabalhar para os extremos é terrível para quem quer triunfar no centrão.

Vai ser bonita a festa, pá!

• Acordo falhado no Brexit pode custar 0,6% ao PIB português
• Banco de Portugal prevê uma balança comercial negativa já este ano
• Banco de Portugal vê economia a abrandar mais em 2020. Alerta para regresso do défice na balança comercial

Espero que haja uma maioria absoluta na próxima legislatura.

Claro que a actual legislatura, com um baixo défice, nos prepara para anos mais exigentes.

E você, como se está a preparar para os próximos anos?

Cassandras-doentias e opções repentinas e unilaterais

Por vezes, as organizações e o contexto que as rodeia estão em sintonia e as organizações prosperam. No entanto, o mais provável é que essa sintonia não dure para sempre, ou porque a organização muda, ou porque o contexto muda, ou porque ambos mudam.

Muitas organizações, arrisco escrever, a maioria, adiam as mudanças para fazer face à alteração do status quo, esperando que se aguardarem o suficiente os astros vão novamente alinhar-se e tudo voltará à normalidade. Só que quanto mais tempo adiam a mudança, mais a dimensão da mudança cresce.

Também há organizações que apelidam de Cassandras-doentias os que com tempo, com antecedência, avisam o que com grande probabilidade aí virá. Assim, as organizações em vez de se prepararem para  uma mais que provável disrupção, antes apostam todas as fichas na manutenção do status quo, apesar de todos os avisos.

Este artigo, "Colégio da Imaculada Conceição, em Coimbra, fecha portas. Não resistiu à “grave situação financeira”" ilustra um caso em que os sinais da mudança foram ignorados e quando se quis fazer algo já era tarde de mais.

"em 2016, o contrato chegou ao fim. “Tratou-se de uma opção repentina e unilateral tomada, na altura, pelo Ministério da Educação, à qual o CAIC foi alheio e à qual se opôs desde a primeira hora, mas sem sucesso”, refere a instituição.
...
Os jesuítas garantem que foram desenvolvidos “todos os esforços para reconfigurar o Colégio à nova condição de colégio privado”. Por exemplo, “o essencial dos encargos passou a ser assumido pelas famílias” e foram “tomadas medidas no sentido de reduzir os encargos, de envolver doadores e de captar novos alunos”. Além disso, ao longo de um ano letivo (2016/2017), o colégio assegurou o seu funcionamento em regime gratuito para os alunos, mesmo já sem o financiamento do estado “num número muito significativo de turmas”.
...
Mas os esforços não foram suficientes. De acordo com a Companhia de Jesus, a “insustentabilidade financeira” tornou-se numa “evidência incontornável, agravando-se os défice de exploração”."

Recordo:

• O paradoxo da estratégia (parte VIII: cenários, futurização e incerteza) (Julho de 2008)
• 27 meses depois (Novembro de 2010) 
• Mais uma sugestão de modelo de negócio (parte I) (Dezembro de 2010)

"uma inconsciência quase divertida"

"A culpa, desculpem lá, é dos portugueses. Incapazes de estabelecer um nexo de causalidade, ou de ligar as acções aos autores e às consequências, os portugueses passam pela vida em sociedade com uma inconsciência quase divertida. Eu, pelo menos, diverti-me bastante a reparar na quantidade de análises que atribuem a abstenção crescente a um alegado “protesto”. Só se agora o povo protesta nas praias e nos “shoppings”, com a jovialidade típica daqueles para quem qualquer porcaria serve. Incluindo, ou talvez principalmente, a porcaria vigente. Sem escrutínio, sem contraponto, sem punição, a porcaria promete durar e deixar uma factura pesada, a título de lembrança. Mas os portugueses não se lembram de nada."

Trecho retirado de "Os dias nacionais da amnésia"

Motivação

"Design Goals, Not Chores
.
Ample research has documented the importance of goal setting. Studies have shown, for example, that when salespeople have targets, they close more deals, and that when individuals make daily exercise commitments, they’re more likely to increase their fitness levels. Abstract ambitions—such as “doing your best”—are usually much less effective than something concrete, such as bringing in 10 new customers a month or walking 10,000 steps a day. As a first general rule, then, any objectives you set for yourself or agree to should be specific.
...
Find Effective Rewards
.
Some tasks or even stretches of a career are entirely onerous—in which case it can be helpful to create external motivators for yourself over the short- to-medium term, especially if they complement incentives offered by your organization.
...
Sustain Progress
.
When people are working toward a goal, they typically have a burst of motivation early and then slump in the middle, where they are most likely to stall out."

Trechos retirados de "How to Keep Working When You’re Just Not Feeling It"

Mongo é um mundo de tribos

Mongo é um mundo de tribos e de tribos com interesses assimétricos.

Eis um bom exemplo das muitas oportunidades que há por explorar, "Universal Standard wants to end the plus size binary once and for all":

"Last month, clothing brand Universal Standard announced that it would start carrying all of its items in sizes 00 to 40, officially making it the most size-inclusive retailer for women across the world.
...
With US’s 00 to 40 sizing, the founders hope to usher in what they describe as the “new normal,” a sort of paradigm shift for apparel in which, as Veksler put it: “It doesn’t matter if you’re a size two or size 32, you should be able to walk into any store or go to any website and only ask yourself one question, and that is: ‘Do I like this?’ not, ‘Does this come in my size?'”

Home delivery (part II)

Part I.

Recordar "Incumbentes e franjas de mercado"

Ontem encontrei mais um sintoma sobre as consequências do tema: "Milhares de camionistas estrangeiros contratados de urgência"

"niche retailers with strong identities"

Tão interessante, tão em sintonia com a visão de Mongo como um mundo de tribos de interesses assimétricos, tão de acordo com "tu não és do meu sangue", tão de acordo com a ambivalência face a Bieber. Ninguém quer ser tratado como plancton. Trechos retirados de "The global village needs walls":

"Facebook has been a giant experiment in understanding humanity. It has proven that we actually don’t want to be part of a global community — we are instead a species of small groups and tribes. If you’re part of everything, you’re not invested in anything, and that feels bad. “Everyone, no exception, must have a tribe, an alliance with which to jockey for power and territory, to demonize the enemy, to organize rallies, and raise flags,”
...
So what does this mean for business? For one, it creates an opening for a smorgasbord of social networks and social businesses.
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“There should be social networks around every conceivable interest,” [Moi ici: Como não recordar o que escrevi, ao arrepio do mainstream, sobre as plataformas universais, não é winner-take-all]
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“The really exciting model is not one company to rule them all, but distributed companies and distributed wealth and revenue, and a social experience built around these supernodes,” said Bianchini, whose company is making a big bet that we’re headed in this direction. Some recent trends seem to bear it out. The number of niche social networks is exploding,
...
Such fracturing of the online world is a headwind even Amazon will eventually have to battle. The bigger Amazon gets, the less it feels like it connects with your personal identity — even with algorithms that figure out what you’re most likely to buy.[Moi ici: Recordar o que escrevo sobre o big data e a miudagem]
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Just as microbrews stole customers from giant, least-common-denominator brands such as Budweiser, niche retailers with strong identities are likely to be more of a challenge to Amazon than some other centralized behemoth.[Moi ici: O que escrevo neste blogue desde sempre... cuidado com os gurus da Junqueira]"

Move ... to influential “orchestrators.”

"Much more complex than linear supply chains, business ecosystems are groups of companies and other actors (platform providers, government agencies, independent contractors, co-creating customers, and so on) whose contributions come together to produce value. The idea is that each of these parties could benefit if they took a more holistic view of their collective efforts.
...
From research and practice, we are beginning to see evidence that managers who adjust their approaches to fit an ecosystems world are better able to succeed in it.
...
leaders must move from being high-ranking delegators to influential “orchestrators.” In environments where leaders can’t exercise formal authority, and where collaborative triumphs trump individual achievements, they must become sharper in their ability to build communities and inspire alignment.
...
To succeed in the era of platforms and partnerships, managers will need to change practice on many levels. And with the new practices of ecosystem management must come new management theory, also reoriented around a larger-scale system-level view. Both practitioners and scholars can begin by dispensing with mechanistic, industrial-age models of inputs, processes, and outputs. They will have to take a more dynamic, organic, and evolutionary view of how organizations’ capacities grow and can be cultivated.
...
An economy, and in particular a capitalist economy, thrives not only when it has the right tools but when it has the right rules. Recrafting these for the era of ecosystems must be the priority of a group that is an ecosystem in itself—the scholars, consultants, regulators, and of course managers whose work shapes the enterprise of management."

Trechos retirados de "What Management Needs to Become in an Era of Ecosystems"

"it is the apparently pointless thing that makes the system work"

“When Downton Abbey first appeared in 2010, a British newspaper interviewed a nonagenarian aristocrat to ask her whether it faithfully reproduced her memories of the pre-war British country house. ‘Well there’s one thing it doesn’t tell you,’ she explained. ‘Back then, the servants literally stank.’ And in the early twentieth century, when it was proposed to install baths for the undergraduates in one Cambridge college, an elderly fellow was having none of this: ‘What do the undergraduates need baths for? The term only lasts eight weeks.
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What had caused this spectacular change in behaviour was complicated, but it was driven as much by unconscious status-seeking as by a conscious effort to improve life expectancy. Soap was sold on its ability to increase your attractiveness more than on its hygienic powers, and while it contained many chemicals that improved hygiene, it is worth remembering that it was also scented to make it attractive – supporting the unconscious promise of the advertising rather than the rational value of the product. The scent was not to make the soap effective, but to make it attractive to consumers.If we are in denial about unconscious motivation, we forget to scent the soap. If we adopt a narrow view of human motivation, we regard any suggestion of scenting the soap as silly. But, like petals on a flower, it is the apparently pointless thing that makes the system work.”

Excerto de: Rory Sutherland. “Alchemy”. Apple Books.

Curiosidade do dia

"A desilusão é o que aparece no fim das ilusões. E que persistirá nesse estado de vazio de futuro enquanto não for feita a crítica (com confissão e penitência) do passado. A crise da bancarrota e do ajustamento não foi usada para abandonar as ilusões. Em lugar da crítica, escolheu-se reformular as mesmas ilusões com um truque de retórica: os que antes se opunham às políticas do ajustamento são os que adoptam as mesmas políticas (até porque não há outras com o valor da dívida que as ilusões do passado acumularam), trocando o programa dos cortes pelo programa das cativações: os bonés são diferentes, mas a cor é a mesma.
...
vai confirmar-se que é a mudança da realidade efectiva das coisas que configura as sociedades e os partidos, não é a sociedade ou os partidos que comandam a mudança. Quando há uma descontinuidade no presente, ela faz com que o futuro que é projectado em função do passado não se confirme. Nestas condições, a memória engana em vez de orientar, e quem conduzir em função do retrovisor não irá ver a curva que está antes do futuro que vai acontecer."

Trechos retirados de "Tempos de desilusão"

Vou apenas especular (parte II)

Leio "Sonae Indústria vai fechar mais uma fábrica na Alemanha" e recuo mais de quatro anos, até Fevereiro de 2015, e ao texto "Vou apenas especular".

Falta uma dose de alquimia, "Alchemy: Or, the Art and Science of Conceiving Effective Ideas That Logical People Will Hate" segundo Rory Sutherland, ou uma dose de paixão, ou como diria o amigo Paulo Vaz, uma dose de optimismo não documentado. Há demasiados mordomos de Gondor à solta.

Tendências

Na sequência de "Alterações que podem ter implicações ..."

"BoF: What industry shifts are you most optimistic about?
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DLR: The two biggest changes are sustainability and inclusivity. 10 years ago, [sustainability] was kind of a niche topic, [but] now it’s on everybody’s lips — everyone from Zara to H&M and Arket are using sustainable fibres. Everybody in our industry is getting conscious about our impact on the environment, as well as how popular and sales-driving it can be to become more eco-responsible.
...
BoF: What topics should the fashion industry be debating more vigorously?
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DLR: In my personal opinion, one of the biggest issues at the moment is overproduction. There's too much product and too many collections. The market is oversaturated. I don't know how this trend could stop but, the industry — both fast fashion and luxury brands — are moving towards the concept of dropping small capsule collections with the aim of selling out. This could be a test for being more limited in production.
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BoF: What are you doing differently in your role this year?
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DLR: My roles at Valentino and Loro Piana are the complete opposite of overproduction. We actually want to produce and sell just a bit less than what people are going to buy because in luxury, we are all based on rarity and desirability. We cannot — and do not want to — overproduce. It has to remain a very special and precious style that you will keep for years, if not generations.
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At Loro Piana, our ultimate focus is quality, durability [and] sourcing the most precious fibres out there. On a professional and personal level, it's already going against this overproduction and overconsumption, as it's a kind of conscious consumption."

Acham que as estruturas produtivas de ontem continuarão a ser as de amanhã?

Trechos retirados de "Loro Piana's Danielle Lesage-Rochette: 'One of the Biggest Issues at the Moment Is Overproduction'"

Intuição estratégica

Interessante como responsáveis de livrarias pequenas têm uma intuição estratégica muito mais afinada do que muito doutor e engenheiro em empresas grandes, "‘Amazon doesn’t play with the kids’: why booksellers are beating the odds":

"Books and bookshops are on the up. Sales of printed books have risen for the fourth successive year; sales of ebooks are falling; and, perhaps most encouraging of all, despite two recent high-profile store closures, the number of independent bookshops is growing again after decades of decline. Books – and readers who want to experience bookshops, rather than buy from Amazon – are not dead. The physical world lives on.
...
Most of the independents who responded are positive, although some are having to diversify to stay afloat. One has opened a tea room, while another I spoke to has closed her shop but plans to start selling children’s books from a boat. A would-be bookseller in Olney, Buckinghamshire, has bought a bus and hopes to sell children’s books from that. Shops are expensive to run, so bibliophiles are using their ingenuity."

What a difference a year makes! (parte II)

Parte I.

A evolução das exportações este ano - números do INE. 

Sabem o quanto aprecio aquele "Parcial I" (Julho e Setembro de 2017). 

À partida podíamos apreciar a evolução positiva do Parcial I de 16,2% do total para 29,6% do total, mas não enganemos a nós próprios... o Parcial I em valor absoluto caiu mais uma vez e até o Parcial II caiu. 

Olhando para a evolução das exportações de automóveis só se pode concluir que continua a fragilização da economia exportadora portuguesa.

BTW, para alguns sectores, como o calçado, 2019 é de encolhimento em cima de encolhimento.

"context and framing matter”

“we should remember that if you design something in a certain way, people can perceive something which doesn’t exist in reality.
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What really is and what we perceive can be very different.
This is where physical laws diverges from psychological ones. And it is this very divergence which makes Alchemy possible.
...
In the same way, you cannot describe someone’s behaviour based on what you see, or what you think they see, because what determines their behaviour is what they think they are seeing. This distinction applies to almost anything: what determines the behaviour of physical objects is the thing itself, but what determines the behaviour of living creatures is their perception of the thing itself.
...
If you are a scientist, your job is to reach beyond the quirks of human perception and create universally applicable laws that describe objective reality. Science has developed sensors and units of measurement, which measure distance, time, temperature, colour, gravity and so on. In the physical sciences we quite rightly prefer these to warped perceptual mechanisms: it does not matter whether a bridge looks strong – we need to know that it really is strong.
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A problem arises when human sciences – politics, economics or medicine, say – believe this universalism to be the hallmark of a science and “pursue the same approach; in the human sciences, just as in TV design, what people perceive is sometimes more important than what is objectively true.
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In physics and engineering, objective models usually make problems easier to solve, while in economics and politics objectivity might make things harder. Some pressing economic and political issues could be solved easily and cheaply if we abandoned dogmatic universal models; just as TV designers don’t wrestle with the problem of producing the entire spectrum of visible light, policy-makers, designers and businessmen would be wise to spend less time trying to improve objective reality and more time studying human perception and moral instinct.
...
Economic logic is an attempt to create a psychology-free model of human behaviour based on presumptions of rationality, but it can be a very costly mistake. Not only can a rational approach to pricing be very destructive of perceived savings, but it also assumes that everyone reacts to savings the same way. They don’t, and context and framing matter.”

Trecho retirado de "Alchemy: Or, the Art and Science of Conceiving Effective Ideas That Logical People Will Hate" de Rory Sutherland.

Alterações que podem ter implicações ...

Alterações que podem ter implicações para a indústria portuguesa:

• encomendas mais pequenas;
• mais encomendas feitas para reposição;
• menos tempo entre a data de recepção da encomenda e a data da sua entrega;
• mais encomendas colocadas na Europa do que na Ásia?

Na sequência de "France Moves To Ban The Destruction Of Unsold Luxury Goods In Favor Of Recycling":

"The French government announced an end to the destruction of unsold non-food stock earlier this week, calling time on a practice that is common in the luxury retail sector. More than $730 million of returns and unsold inventory are routinely thrown away or destroyed by consumer goods retailers in France, and the practice is widespread in the luxury sector in an effort to maintain label exclusivity. The current value of goods thrown away or destroyed is five times more than those given away." 

 Não é só no "common in the luxury retail sector". Recordar:

• "How Amazon destroys millions of new items it can’t sell with everything from TVs to kitchen equipment, books and nappies dumped in landfill sites";
• "Taking stock of fashion’s $210bn inventory problem"
• "Destroying Unsold Clothes Is Fashion’s Dirty Secret. And We’re Complicit."

Interessante

Por um lado, "Número de portugueses empregados baixa pela primeira vez desde 2013", por outro, "Entrada de portugueses no Luxemburgo aumentou pela primeira vez em cinco anos".

Ruidosamente a caminho da Sildávia.

Evitar o seu Tancos

Ontem de manhã, na minha caminhada matinal, li:

“Blame, unlike credit, always finds a home, and no one ever got fired for booking JFK. By going with the default, you are making a worse decision overall, but also insuring yourself against a catastrophically bad personal outcome. In his book Risk Savvy (2014), the German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer refers to this mental process as ‘Defensive Decision-Making’ – making a decision which is unconsciously designed not to maximise welfare overall but to minimise the damage to the decision maker in the event of a negative outcome. Much human behaviour that is derided as ‘irrational’ is actually evidence of a clever satisficing instinct – repeating a past behaviour or copying what most other people do may not be optimal, but is unlikely to be disastrous. We are all descended from people who managed to reproduce before making a fatal mistake, so it is hardly surprising that our brains are wired this way."

De tarde estive numa reunião onde me descreviam os comportamentos de um cliente... fiz logo a associação.

O cliente despeja as coisas para que os seus funcionários evitem problemas. Até comentei:
- Parece que querem evitar o seu Tancos. Por isso, chutam para o fornecedor.

Excerto de: Rory Sutherland. “Alchemy”. Apple Books.

"The modern education system ..."

“The modern education system spends most of its time teaching us how to make decisions under conditions of perfect certainty. However, as soon as we leave school or university, the vast majority of decisions we all have to take are not of that kind at all. Most of the decisions we face have something missing – a vital fact or statistic that is unavailable, or else unknowable at the time we make the decision. The types of intelligence prized by education and by evolution seem to be very different.”

Trecho retirado de "Alchemy: Or, the Art and Science of Conceiving Effective Ideas That Logical People Will Hate" de Rory Sutherland.

Uma das tendências do mercado actual

Um artigo interessante sobre uma das tendências do mercado actual "More Americans Are Living Solo, and Companies Want Their Business":

"More Americans than ever are living alone these days, and many don’t want to bake full-size cakes, buy eggs by the dozen, run half-loaded dishwashers or store 24-packs of toilet paper.
...
Consumer-products companies are taking note, catering to what they see as a lucrative market for single-person households by upending generations of family-focused product development and marketing. Appliance makers are shrinking refrigerators and ovens. Food companies are producing more single-serving options. Household-product makers are revamping packaging.
...
“We have to go beyond the paradigm of the middle-class family of four for growth, so smaller households have been a huge focus for us,”
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Looking beyond the family of four, she says, “is a really big shift.”
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Today, 35.7 million Americans live alone, 28% of households. That is up from 13% of households in 1960 and 23% in 1980, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Delayed or foregone marriage, [Moi ici: Ontem de manhã sentado no hall de um hotel, enquanto aguardava a chegada de uma pessoa, ouvia uma conversa de turistas brasileiras todas bem entradas na terceira idade. Uma delas dizia para as outras, com um toque de reprovação, que o filho de 34 anos nem pensava em casar] longer life expectancy, urbanization and wealth have contributed, demographers say.
...
Researchers have found many affluent, single-person households in urban areas tend to spend more per person than larger ones. They are often willing to spend more for a unit of something—twice as much, say, for chopped romaine as a whole head.
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Some want smaller appliances but bigger closets, or prefer one huge roll of toilet paper over multiple backup rolls they must store somewhere. Many marketers approach single-person households with urban consumers in mind.
...
For generations, consumers favored appliances with the biggest capacity, so manufacturers have long boasted how many towels squeeze into a washing machine or how easily a large turkey slides into an oven. But small households usually choose appliances by finding which will best fit their space, companies say.
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“They’re not trying to load every towel in from the pool,”"

A personalização

Este texto levanta um tema interessante: a customização levada ao extremo, a personalização, será viável economicamente?

Acredito que será, algures no futuro, mas não com as empresas de hoje e com os modelos económicos de hoje. Terão de começar por produtos premium e, por tentativa e erro, ir construindo os modelos de negócio que vão resultar. Terão de ser empresas mais pequenas, se calhar cooperativas com estruturas produtivas partilhadas. Terão de ser produtos para durar uma vida e que voltarão mais do que uma vez ao fabricante para reparação. Terão de ser produtos co-criados em proximidade.

Não digo que o modelo actual de produção desapareça completamente, mas  deixará de ser tão comum certamente.

Home delivery

Desde 2010 que era tão previsível o sucesso do "home delivery". Recordar o uso do marcador.

Agora, "FedEx to deliver 7 days a week to satisfy online shoppers"... e os CTT desde mundo? Presos a modelos de negócio do passado, mais preocupados em defender o passado do que abraçar a mudança para conquistar o futuro.

A supporting role

"Problems are stories — it’s a dull tale that has no conflict to resolve. The customer on the other side of that table is the protagonist in their own adventure. We’ve selected them as a persona that might be interested in casting us as their hero (or even in a supporting role that lets them be the hero of their own story)."

É isto, voltar a Luke e a Yoda: "Parte III - O cliente é que é o Luke"

Trecho retirado de "What a Journalist Can Teach Lean Startups about Customer Interviews"

Show me the money!

Um pouco por todo o lado vejo sintomas do crescimento canceroso no mundo agrícola... uma pena.

A propósito de "O maior desafio dos produtores de vinho é aumentar a capacidade negocial":

"Ao fim de seis anos, os vinhos portugueses ultrapassaram os franceses e os italianos em volume de venda para o Brasil, disputam de perto o segundo lugar com a Argentina e já puseram o Chile em sentido, roubando-lhes dez por cento do mercado.
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Há espaço para todo o tipo de vinhos e lugar para todos os visitantes, dos mais exigentes aos menos conhecedores. [Moi ici: Portanto, ausência de estratégia?] Todos os bilhetes para as provas de vinho e academias esgotaram em horas e as filas para o salão de degustação são prova do sucesso do evento." [Moi ici: Qual o preço médio? Esse devia ser o critério de sucesso?]

A vida é um eterno retorno (parte III)

Parte I e Parte II.

O que não era relevante para a competição quando o pico da esquerda estava a crescer, passa a ser relevante quando o pico da direita começa a crescer.

Lembram-se do banhista gordo?

Lembram-se do banhista gordo?

Confrontar com "Logistics Bottlenecks Hamper Efforts to Produce Less in China":

"Companies looking to move some production from China to other Asian countries to avoid mounting U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports face significant bumps in the road.
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Manufacturers and supply-chain experts say logistics infrastructure in Southeast Asia, where many goods-makers are scouting for new production sites, remains far less developed than China’s long-established connections between factories, suppliers and customers around the world.
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Poor roads, sparse rail lines and congested ports in Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia and other potential manufacturing destinations in Southeast Asia have stretched out delivery schedules and raised shipping costs, according to manufacturing and transportation company executives, even as companies have migrated some factory work to the region in the past decade in search of lower labor costs.
...
Even before U.S. tariffs, factory work in Southeast Asia has been growing as companies have sought lower costs while wages and other expenses in China have increased. That manufacturing migration has taken on more urgency for some producers as the trade conflict between the U.S. and Washington has heated up, with a new round of back-and-forth tariffs this spring and threats of higher levies this summer."

A vida é um eterno retorno (parte II)

Parte I.

A propósito de "Fashion chains use factories in Africa that pay £5 a week"... e de "Não está fácil":

"Tivemos um recuo na ordem dos 3% nas vendas ao exterior [Moi ici: em 2018] e a surpresa foi apenas uma: já não estávamos habituados.
...
No primeiro trimestre ainda sofremos uma quebra de 10%" [Moi ici: em 2019] 

Começámos uma recuperação de 10 anos no sector do calçado tirando partido da carta da rapidez face à China. No entanto, cada vez mais alternativas rápidas vão surgindo e com custos mais baixos.

Abordagem baseada no risco e os processos

Ontem recebi uma pergunta interessante:

"Estou um pouco confuso sobre se as inspecções de recepção das mercadorias dos clientes devem ou não ser incluídas no procedimento de recepção.  Somos um armazém que recebe e armazena as mercadorias dos clientes. Como os produtos não são de fornecedores, mas de clientes, as verificações a serem realizadas precisam estar no procedimento de recepção?"

A pergunta é interessante porque permite exemplificar como sempre vi a aplicação aos processos da abordagem baseada no risco.

Vamos imaginar que o autor da pergunta observou as actividades em torno da recepção de mercadorias do cliente para serem armazenadas no seu armazém. Vamos supor tenha anotado as seguintes atividades:

• Receber camião;
• Verifique papéis;
• Determinar o local de armazenamento;
• Descarregar camião; 
• Armazenar mercadorias;
• Atualizar inventário.

Agora, aplicando a abordagem baseada no risco e pensando com as pessoas que trabalham no processo: o que é que pode correr mal no processo?

E listam-se coisas como:

• Recepção de mercadorias endereçadas a outros;
• Recepção de mercadorias (quantidades e / ou referências) diferentes do que está no manifesto de carga;
• Recepção de mercadorias com embalagem danificada ou violada;
• …

Agora, há que aplicar uma avaliação a estes riscos, para os classificar como críticos ou não críticos.

Se a organização considera alguns dos riscos determinados como críticos, então é preciso desenvolver planos de ação para lidar com esses riscos críticos. Um dos planos de ação pode ser verificar quantidades e referências durante a descarga e registar o resultado. Outro plano de ação poderá ser a criação de um conjunto de imagens que serão usadas para classificar um dano ou violação de embalagem como relevante. Nesse caso, os eventos são registados, fotografados e comunicados imediatamente ao cliente.

A organização não usará os produtos, mas será responsável pelas quantidades e estado enquanto estiver à sua guarda.

Se os riscos são críticos, então as acções realizadas diariamente para os controlar ou minimizar devem fazer parte do procedimento.

Será que sabe?

Vi a montra e sorri.

Reparem na mensagem a vermelho abaixo do preço: 100% pele

Cada vez mais gente procura alternativas à pele.

Será que o lojista sabe? Será que o lojista não sabe? Será que é uma opção estratégica deliberada? Será que é uma herança não questionada?

"brand feedback mechanism"

“we felt uneasy buying something that cost a few hundred pounds without the reassurance of a recognizable name.
...
Without the brand feedback mechanism, there was no incentive for any one manufacturer to make a safer, better version of the board, since they were not positioned to reap the gains. As a result, the market became a commoditised race to the bottom, in which both innovation and quality control fail. Why make a better product if no one knows it was you who made it? So no one did make a better board, and the whole category more or less died as a result. It may correct itself if better boards arise, or if a shrewd company such as Samsung cannily attaches its name to the best.
...
Branding isn’t just something to add to great products – it’s essential to their existence.”

Uma marca é o princípio da concorrência imperfeita, como bem sabia o totó do Chamberlin.

Não está fácil

"A quebra das exportações em 2018 foi uma surpresa? Estamos num setor que cresce praticamente há uma década de forma consecutiva. Desde 2008, as exportações portuguesas de calçado cresceram cerca de 50% e o emprego aumentou mais de 20%. É normal que haja algum pequeno reajustamento. Tivemos um recuo na ordem dos 3% nas vendas ao exterior e a surpresa foi apenas uma: já não estávamos habituados.
.
E como começou o ano para a indústria portuguesa de calçado? O início do ano foi, ainda, um período de contenção. Nos dois últimos anos, o retalho tem sido muito fustigado, nomeadamente no centro da Europa. Desapareceram centenas de retalhistas e tivemos de procurar novos clientes. Não é fácil. No primeiro trimestre ainda sofremos uma quebra de 10%, mas as nossas previsões apontam para um segundo semestre já mais favorável."

Recordar:

Trecho retirado de "Luís Onofre: “O que é preocupante é perceber que o mercado não é tão grande como um dia ambicionamos”"

Mongo e magia (parte IX)

Parte I , parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI, parte VII e parte VIII.

“no one believes in magic any more. Yet magic does still exist – it is found in the fields of psychology, biology and the science of perception, rather than in physics and chemistry. And it can be created.
...
We don’t value things; we value their meaning. What they are is determined by the laws of physics, but what they mean is determined by the laws of psychology.
...
but had got it into their heads that the value of something lies solely in what it is. This was a false assumption, because you don’t need to tinker with atomic structure to make lead as valuable as gold – all you need to do is to tinker with human psychology so that it feels as valuable as gold. At which point, who cares that it isn’t actually gold?
.
If you think that’s impossible, look at the paper money in your wallet or purse; the value is exclusively psychological. Value resides not in the thing itself, but in the minds of those who value it. You can therefore create (or destroy) value it in two ways – either by changing the thing or by changing minds about what it is.”

Trechos retirados de "Alchemy: Or, the Art and Science of Conceiving Effective Ideas That Logical People Will Hate" de Rory Sutherland.

Curiosidade do dia II

A normandagem, os esbirros do João Sem Terra cá do sítio, têm de aumentar o saque para pagar o resgate de Ricardo Coração de Leão.

Toda a gente sabe que isso era um bode expiatório, o dinheiro era para pagar à casta normanda. As famílias e os 800 mil funcionários ficam muito caros. O resto é paisagem.

Curiosidade do dia I

Hoje, pouco antes das 9h da manhã, enquanto circulava numa autoestrada ouvia o Nico do laço entusiasmado porque mais uma empresa de software se vai instalar em Portugal.

Nico explicava que estas empresas vem para Portugal por causa de uma série de vantagens competitivas que ele enumerava, entre as quais a criatividade lusa e eu ria-me.

Tenho gente cá em casa que anda a sondar o mercado para programadores na Alemanha, Suíça et al.

Por exemplo, na Suíça um programador com um ano de experiência pode entrar a ganhar 5000 euros por mês, em Portugal pode estar a ganhar 1000-1100 e com n jogadas para reduzir saque impostal.

O Nico não se lembrou desta vantagem.

Mongo e magia (parte VIII)

Parte I , parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI e parte VII.

Um texto que parece tirado deste blogue:

“Business, technology and, to a great extent, government have spent the last several decades engaged in an unrelenting quest for measurable gains in efficiency. [Moi ici: No caso dos governos basta recordar a paranóia das escolas-cidade e hospitais-cidade, basta recordar o meu ataque ao eficientismo e ao denominador, o desconhecimento do Evangelho do Valor] However, what they have never asked, is whether people like efficiency as much as economic theory believes they do. The ‘doorman fallacy’, as I call it, is what happens when your strategy becomes synonymous with cost-saving and efficiency; first you define a hotel doorman’s role as ‘opening the door’, then you replace his role with an automatic door-opening mechanism.
.
The problem arises because opening the door is only the notional role of a doorman; his other, less definable sources of value lie in a multiplicity of other functions, in addition to door-opening: taxi-hailing, security, vagrant discouragement, customer recognition, as well as in signalling the status of the hotel. The doorman may actually increase what you can charge for a night’s stay in your hotel.
When every function of a business is looked at from the same narrow economic standpoint, the same game is applied endlessly. Define something narrowly, automate or streamline it – or remove it entirely – then regard the savings as profit.
...
[Moi ici: Recordar quando falo dos Muggles e daqueles que não nutrem relações de amor com clientes, produtos e serviços] Today, the principal activity of any publicly held company is rarely the creation of products to satisfy a market need. Management attention is instead largely directed towards the invention of plausible-sounding efficiency narratives to satisfy financial analysts, many of whom know nothing about the businesses they claim to analyse, beyond what they can read on a spreadsheet. There is no need to prove that your cost-saving works empirically, as long as it is consistent with standard economic theory. It is a simple principle of business that, however badly your decision turns out, you will never be fired for following economics, even though its predictive value lies somewhere between water divining and palmistry.”

Trechos retirados de "Alchemy: Or, the Art and Science of Conceiving Effective Ideas That Logical People Will Hate" de Rory Sutherland.

Portefolio de projectos de melhoria

Interessante este trecho:

"Providers resisted the notion that successful continuous-improvement strategies in other hospital units would work in theirs, so we quickly realized that name-dropping Toyota and the Cleveland Clinic would only compound resistance to change.
.
To alter this mindset, we focused on isolating and solving a problem in their unit. Showing the problem exists in a team’s day-to-day setting fuels conversations that lead to change and makes them less likely to jettison the initiative amid a leadership change. In this case, the renal transplant team was able to reduce readmissions by 9% over nine months in 2017 and continued to improve even after the clinic’s medical director departed. This success inspired other teams at the medical center to study and change their own processes."

Actualmente a implementar um sistema de gestão ambiental numa metalomecânica, optámos por concentrar o esforço inicial de implementação no desenvolvimento de alguns projectos:

• Melhorar o tratamento dos resíduos 
• Prevenir, responder e simular resposta a fugas e derrames
• Regularizar a captação de água
• Regularizar as emissões
• Controlar o ruído

Um pouco na linha da sugestão da ISO 14005:2019.

Trecho inicial retirado de "Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement"

Connected companies

"The Old ApproachCompanies used to interact with customers only episodically, when customers came to them.
.
The New ApproachToday, thanks to new technologies, companies can address customers’ needs the moment they arise—and sometimes even earlier. With connected strategies, firms can build deeper ties with customers and dramatically improve their experiences.
.
The UpshotCompanies need to make continuous connection a fundamental part of their business models. They can do so with four strategies: respond to desire, curated offering, coach behavior, and automatic execution.
.
A seismic shift is under way. Thanks to new technologies that enable frequent, low-friction, customized digital interactions, companies today are building much deeper ties with customers than ever before. Instead of waiting for customers to come to them, firms are addressing customers’ needs the moment they arise—and sometimes even earlier. It’s a win-win: Through what we call connected strategies, customers get a dramatically improved experience, and companies boost operational efficiencies and lower costs.
...
In our research we’ve identified four effective connected strategies, each of which moves beyond traditional modes of customer interaction and represents a fundamentally new business model. We call them respond to desire, curated offering, coach behavior, and automatic execution."

Trechos retirados de "The Age of Continuous Connection"

Desafios

"When setting team goals, many managers feel that they must maintain a tricky balance between setting targets high enough to achieve impressive results and setting them low enough to keep the troops happy. But the assumption that employees are more likely to welcome lower goals doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. In fact, our research indicates that in some situations people perceive higher goals as easier to attain than lower ones — and even when that’s not the case, they still can find those more challenging goals more appealing."

Trecho retirado de "Why You Should Stop Setting Easy Goals"

"Variety isn’t infinitely valuable"

"Seeing this ever-expanding variety and choice as advantageous to consumers is tempting. The economic theory that governs many Americans’ understanding of consumer choice posits that a free, competitive market should drive down prices on the best-quality stuff. But in the arms race to sell as many sandwich bags or beach towels as possible, a problem has become clear: Variety isn’t infinitely valuable.
...
Those infinite, meaningless options can result in something like a consumer fugue state.
...
For a relatively new class of consumer-products start-ups, there’s another method entirely. Instead of making sense of a sea of existing stuff, these companies claim to disrupt stuff as Americans know it. Casper (mattresses), Glossier (makeup), Away (suitcases), and many others have sprouted up to offer consumers freedom from choice: The companies have a few aesthetically pleasing and supposedly highly functional options, usually at mid-range prices. They’re selling nice things, but maybe more importantly, they’re selling a confidence in those things, and an ability to opt out of the stuff rat race."

Trechos retirados de "There Is Too Much Stuff"

Don’t design for average

“Don’t design for average.
Metrics, and especially averages, encourage you to focus on the middle of a market, but innovation happens at the extremes. You are more likely to come up with a good idea focusing on one outlier than on ten average users.”

Trechos retirados de "Alchemy: Or, the Art and Science of Conceiving Effective Ideas That Logical People Will Hate" de Rory Sutherland.

Uma revolução que vai ter de acontecer

A propósito disto "Tight job market squeezing smallest businesses":

"Low unemployment and rising wages are creating hiring challenges for companies of all sizes. There were 7.5 million unfilled jobs on the last business day of March, according to the Labor Department.
.
Smaller businesses often experience lower job growth, but they seem to be having a particularly tough time adding workers in today’s job market."

Recordar o impacte sobre o aumento dos salários desligado do aumento da produtividade e da inevitável destruição de empresas incapazes de subirem na escala de valor a uma velocidade adequada:

• Como aumentar a facturação quando não se pode aumentar a produção por falta de pessoas? (parte IV)
• "Espero que não vos tremam as pernas quando as empresas começarem a cair como tordos"

Nos próximos anos vai haver muito pranto e ranger de dentes da parte dos empresários com o locus de controlo no exterior.

"fabulously efficient"

Há dias num programa na TV cabo onde dois indivíduos percorrem a América profunda em busca de antiguidades, um deles delirou ao encontrar os restos de uma bicicleta de 1880. Isso foi motivo para passarem imagens de marcas de bicicletas dos nos 20 e 30 do século passado. Nessas imagens o que mais me marcou foi a muita preocupação com o design e a pouca preocupação com a eficiência pura e dura.

“Likewise it is absurd for the French to have so many local varieties of cheese, and yet this variety and scarcity seems to add to our pleasure. Contrast it with the US cheese industry thirty years ago – which was fabulously efficient and centred on a small number of states. In the 1990s there seemed to be only two varieties of cheese, a yellow one and an orange one, and neither was much good. Similarly, before the recent revolution in craft beer, the range and quality of American beer was dismal; however, since American brewing has become magnificently diverse and inefficient, the US has gone from being the worst country for a beer drinker to visit, to the best.”

Recordar estes delírios.

Considerar este título "Consumo de cerveja artesanal bate recordes".

"Diversificação da oferta agrada aos portugueses, que são os principais consumidores fora de casa na Europa.
...
entre abril de 2017 e abril de 2019, as vendas desta categoria de cervejas cresceram 88% em valor e 112% em quantidade, num mercado global que evoluiu 8% em valor e 5% em quantidade, no mesmo período. Considerado apenas o último ano, o acréscimo foi de 10% em valor e 15% em quantidade, três a cinco vezes mais do que os 3% do mercado total de cervejas."

Pensar na race-to-the-bottom entre cervejeiras industriais que julgam que o preço e a eficiência são tudo. E como não recuar a Loulé em Novembro de 2007?

Trechos retirados de "Alchemy: Or, the Art and Science of Conceiving Effective Ideas That Logical People Will Hate" de Rory Sutherland.

Mongo e magia (parte VII)

Parte I , parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V e parte VI.

“GPS devices know everything about what they know and nothing about anything else.
...
The reason we don’t always behave in a way which corresponds with conventional ideas of rationality is not because we are silly: it is because we know more than we know we know.
...
The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say.’ Trivers and Kurzban explained the evolutionary science behind that conundrum: we simply don’t have access to our genuine motivations, because it is not in our interest to know.
...
Evolution does not care about objectivity – it only cares about fitness.
.
If it helps us to perceive the world in a distorted fashion, then evolution will limit our objectivity. The standard, naïve view, as Trivers observes, is to assume that evolution has given us senses which deliver an accurate view of the world. However, evolution cares nothing for accuracy and objectivity: it cares about fitness.
...
For a business to be truly customer-focused, it needs to ignore what people say. Instead it needs to concentrate on what people feel."

Trechos retirados de "Alchemy: Or, the Art and Science of Conceiving Effective Ideas That Logical People Will Hate" de Rory Sutherland.

Operacionalizar uma estratégia

Uma estratégia, qualquer que ela seja, não passa de uma ideia. Para que tenha algum impacte numa organização tem de ser traduzida em acção.

Acção significa saber: o que fazer; por quem, até quando, com que recursos.

Ou seja, a estratégia tem de ser operacionalizada em actividades muito concretas, muito específicas.

“1. Selecting existing capabilities that need to be enhanced and/or new capabilities that need to be introduced into the sourcing, operations and selling activities
.
2. Identifying enabling practices that will help and support the development of the required capabilities; the practices will affect the structure, systems and culture of the business
.
3. Developing specific initiatives to install those practices and to directly build the required capabilities
.
4. Moving from initiatives into actions that directly impact the system. These actions must also generate feedback to enable us to track the effects of the changes introduced.
.
This last step is critical: if there is no change in what people actually do, the strategy process will have no positive impact on the system.
.
A clearly stated competitive strategy can build a coherent collective intention, which can help to integrate the efforts of all the members of the firm.”

Recordar:

• BSC numa IPSS (parte VI) (Julho de 2014)
• Transformar uma empresa de forma alinhada com a estratégia (parte VIII) (Agosto de 2018)

Imagem e trechos retirados de “What's Your Competitive Advantage?” de Paul Raspin

Ecosystem marketing

"In essence, ecosystem marketing is about understanding the market as a network of participants and being able to influence the right actors at the right time.
...
Companies used to last 75 years.  Now the average company dies or disappears in 15 years.
.
Companies die for a number of reasons.  One growing reason is that the company’s leaders do not understand the ecosystem that supports the company.
...
Ecosystem marketing is the process of positioning your idea, message or product in the right ecosystems to gain visibility, engage prospects, capture attention, and create customers.  It is the process of discovering, analyzing, understanding, and taking marketing actions – in four distinct yet interrelated ecosystems:
.
Company,
Competitor,
Category, and
Customer.
...
Company ecosystems are defined as the digital neighborhood in which your business is located to include your partners, suppliers, and distributors. It is your business ecosystem.
...
An economic community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations and individuals—the organisms of the business world. The economic community produces goods and services of value to customers, who are themselves members of the ecosystem. The member organisms also include suppliers, lead producers, competitors, and other stakeholders. Over time, they coevolve their capabilities and roles, and tend to align themselves with the directions set by one or more central companies."

Trechos retirados de "“Ecosystem Marketing: The Future of Competition” – Christian Sarkar and Philip Kotler"

Mongo e magia (parte VI)

Parte I , parte II, parte III, parte IV e parte V.

“People are highly contradictory....Our very perception of the world is affected by context, which is why the rational attempt to contrive universal, context-free laws for human behaviour may be largely doomed.
...
Economic exchanges are heavily affected by context and attempts to shoehorn human behaviour into a single, one-size-fits-all straitjacket are flawed from the outset – they are driven by our dangerous love of certainty: However, this can only come from theory, which by its very universal nature doesn’t take context into account.
...
I hope it will free you slightly from the modern rationalist straitjacket, and help you understand that many problems might be solved if we abandoned the rationalist obsession with universal, context-free laws. Once free of this constraint, you might have the freedom to generate magical ideas, some of which may be silly but of which others will be invaluable."

Trechos retirados de "Alchemy: Or, the Art and Science of Conceiving Effective Ideas That Logical People Will Hate" de Rory Sutherland.

Curiosidade do dia

A propósito de "Défice externo salta para 2,5% do PIB no primeiro trimestre":

"Segundo os dados publicados esta terça-feira pelo Banco de Portugal, o saldo conjunto das balanças corrente e de capital fixou-se em -1.231 milhões de euros, o que compara com -78 milhões de euros em igual período de 2018."

Juntar a "Endividamento da economia sobe para 356,8% do PIB no primeiro trimestre"

Mongo e magia (parte V)

Parte I , parte II, parte III e parte IV.

“it is perfectly possible to be both rational and wrong.
Logical ideas often fail because logic demands universally applicable laws but humans, unlike atoms, are not consistent enough in their behaviour for such laws to hold very broadly.
...
The drive to be rational has led people to seek political and economic laws that are akin to the laws of physics – universally true and applicable. The caste of rational decision makers requires generalisable laws to allow them confidently to pronounce on matters without needing to consider the specifics of the situation. And in reality ‘context’ is often the most important thing in determining how people think, behave and act: this simple fact dooms many universal models from the start. Because in order to form universal laws, naïve rationalists have to pretend that context doesn’t matter.
...
Logic requires that people find universal laws, but outside of scientific fields, there are fewer of these than we might expect. And once human psychology has a role to play, it is perfectly possible for behaviour to become entirely contradictory.
...
While in physics the opposite of a good idea is generally a bad idea, in psychology the opposite of a good idea can be a very good idea indeed: both opposites often work."

Um tema que abordo há anos quando recordo os que pensam que a economia é como a física newtoniana ou galilaica. Um tema que também abordo quando recordo que o preço é contextual



Trechos retirados de "Alchemy: Or, the Art and Science of Conceiving Effective Ideas That Logical People Will Hate" de Rory Sutherland.

Outro regresso

Depois do regresso do vinil, da cassete, das livrarias, das ... eis o regresso dos catálogos em papel, "How to Use Catalogues in a Digital Age".

"For decades, retailers used catalogues — often hundreds of pages thick — to showcase their inventory and sell products via mail or telephone orders.
...
But with the rise of e-commerce, catalogues fell out of favour.
...
Marketers say they’ve started to see a rebound in the last couple years, mainly from online brands, which now fill the mailboxes of their millennial consumers. They see mailings as a low-cost alternative to advertising on search engines and social media, where costs have risen as more companies look for new customers online. Today’s iteration of catalogues are slimmer and less product-driven. Consumers are encouraged to purchase items online, often with a special discount code in the catalogue.
.
“I think digital communications are starting to overwhelm people, and a well-designed piece of print advertisement can be an unexpected touchpoint,”
...
Unlike the dense catalogues of the past, mailers today are shorter because there’s no longer a need to feature every single product a brand carries when the online shop is at a consumer’s fingertips.
.
Many catalogues now look more like magazines, and some brands produce editorial content."

"not because you figured out how to spend money to interrupt more and more strangers"

"If you can figure out how to embrace the true fans, they’ll go ahead and spread an idea–not because you want them to, but because they want to.
.
Your ability to reach a tiny group of committed fans is essential. But the work spreads because of the fans, not because you figured out how to spend money to interrupt more and more strangers."

E em Mongo isto vai ser cada vez mais verdade.

Trecho retirado de "It’s all horizontal (and books went first)"

Nichos

Trabalhar para nichos:

• Ex-trabalhadora da Salsa calça mulheres com pés grandes
• Lavoro apresenta bota nova para o exército

"Never quote a price before..."

"So, when it comes to pricing, here's the most essential rule--the pricing rule that always produces both the most sales and the most profit:
.
Never quote a price before the customer fully understands the benefit of buying.
...
"The specific price varies depending on exactly what you order, how you pay for it, and so forth. I'm sure we can make an arrangement that will work for both of us, but in similar situations, companies like yours spend in the range of [low price] to [high price.]"
...
The client goes "Whoa! That's way more than we can afford!" You win, because now you know this isn't a prospective client, so you can end the conversation without wasting more of your valuable time.
.
Or the client nods and says something like, "Why such a large difference in price?" You continue with "it depends on exactly what you want to accomplish..." and segue back to talking about the benefits."

Trechos retirados de "The Single Most Essential Rule About Pricing"

Sinais de Mongo por todo o lado

Sinais de Mongo por todo o lado.

Desta feita a explosão de marcas, a ascensão das marcas das empresas pequenas, o triunfo do numerador sobre o denominador.

"The fast-moving-consumer-goods industry has a long history of generating reliable growth through mass brands. But the model that fueled industry success now faces great pressure as consumer behaviors shift and the channel landscape changes. To win in the coming decades, FMCGs need to reduce their reliance on mass brands and offline mass channels and embrace an agile operating model focused on brand relevance rather than synergies.
...
Consumers under 35 differ fundamentally from older generations in ways that make mass brands and channels ill suited to them. They tend to prefer new brands, especially in food products. According to recent McKinsey research, millennials are almost four times more likely than baby boomers to avoid buying products from “the big food companies.”
.
And while millennials are obsessed with research, they resist brand-owned marketing and look instead to learn about brands from each other. They also tend to believe that newer brands are better or more innovative, and they prefer not to shop in mass channels.
...
Explosion of small brandsMany small consumer-goods companies are capitalizing on millennial preferences and digital marketing to grow very fast. These brands can be hard to spot because they are often sold online or in channels not covered by the syndicated data that the industry has historically relied on heavily.
...
Retailers have also taken notice of these small brands. According to The Nielsen Company, US retailers are giving small brands double their fair share of new listings. The reason is twofold: retailers want small brands to differentiate their proposition and to drive their margins, as these small brands tend to be premium and rarely promote. As a consequence, small brands are capturing two to three times their fair share of growth while the largest brands remain flat or in slight decline"

Trechos retirados de "The new model for consumer goods"

Curiosidade do dia

A caminho da Sildávia.

Acerca da comunicação

Comunicação objectiva?

Não, isso não existe, ponto!

Imagem retirada daqui.