Both the Business concept and the Strategy concept require that the evaluation of the Theater of Operations provide clear guiding elements. There, in short, the actions will be developed and the conflict will be settled.
For the Business concept, the theater of operations is usually the Market.
For the concept of Strategy, the theater of operations is a physical conception of space-time where actions are put into practice.
Both concepts converge ontologically when it is stated that the theater of operations cannot be an intellectual abstraction, it must be a reality of a physical nature. This consideration will become very important later.
In the first place, it must be determined whether the Market can be understood as a physical conception in time and space.
In Business theory, the Market brings together all the agents involved in the dynamics that support the Business itself.
Among them is, of course, the Organization itself, competing organizations and customers, consumers or purchasing agents. This last classification is not irrelevant, since the Sales Strategy differentiates a Client (agent with defined purchase frequency) from a consumer (who eventually accesses the Organization's offer) or a purchasing agent (who could become a consumer or client but at a certain moment it is neither one nor the other).
For Business theory, the market also incorporates other agents that have their own weight in the development of operations: Regulatory Organizations, Legislation, Organizations in the line of Business (suppliers, consumer associations or clients, for example), etc.
Business theory places each of these agents in a certain System, which allows a better identification and evaluation: the organization, the competition and the clients form the Main System, its components are part of
various Subsystems and the rest of the agents they are part of the Suprasystem.
All systems work in subordination and continuous conditioning, generating the dynamics of the operation.
If the Business theory were to conclude this way its concept of the Market, all these elements could be placed without major problems between the margins of physical realities in time and space, a condition that the concept of Strategy demands. In that case there would be no additional difficulty for the Strategy to take command of the action.
The problem arises when business theory, in a technical effort to complete the evaluation of the factors, studies variables that also make up the market dynamics and that do not necessarily have physical characteristics. Most of them are linked to the most important agent on the market: the consumer, the client, the purchasing agent (for convenience, he will be called a client from now on).
The customer is who defines the character of the entire Process. The client is the reason for the existence and existence of the Business and with it the entire business theory.
The power of the client over the entire process is found in the final Decision he makes to perfect the Sale, in the choice he makes over the set of options presented by the Offer.
The variables that are conditioning the customer's decisions and choices among the options of the offer, in turn, build the Demand. The
Demand is far from constituting an aggregate of specific purchase-sale transactions, the latter are only a conclusion, a specific state that reached the process.
Demand exists before the very conception of these transactions and exists after they have been transformed into a statistic. Demand is a permanent state sustained by the existence of agents who inexorably demand goods and services, at all times, always.
What variables then determine the existence of Demand?
It is the answers that this question has that move away the entire process of physical parameters that are located in a specific frame of space and time.
The answers to this question lead the study to levels of abstraction that can change many of the essential considerations. Because abstract are precisely the variables that explain the Demand: tastes, preferences, inclinations, habits, hobbies, customs, etc., all of them attitudes of flesh and blood people.
The first consideration that is at risk of change is precisely that related to the theater of operations.
If the entire process that supports the raison d'être of the Business and therefore of the Sales Strategy, is perfected in the Customer's Decision, then the concrete battlefield is The Customer's Mind. There the conflict occurs, from there the final decisions that perfect the entire process are managed, there the gestational nature of the Demand is also generated, understanding by the latter what an incalculable set of Minds is processing with respect to the options it presents the Offer, even beyond considerations that the Offer deserves, since it can be interpreted that the Demand exists first and that it generates the need for an Offer.
This complexity is probably not frightening so far that the following questions arise subtly: What is the Mind of the Client ?, What is a Mind ?.
The epistemological syncretism that supports the existence of Administration and Strategy as management elements, is in this case, put to the test.
The problem does not necessarily go through the impossibility of rationalizing the matter. The great problem arises from the difficulty implicit in the subject, from the enormous margins of error that the handling of a matter of this nature can cause.
From the sole perspective, the concept of Business enters into a conflict of causal relationships, but the concept of Strategy can receive a fatal blow, one that in fact makes it unfeasible as a facilitating instrument in the mechanics of conducting the Business.
It is advisable to emphasize again that the Strategy is essentially a pragmatic element of orientation, it coexists with practical elements, it is a set of dynamic elements that must develop their energy and that have to achieve objectives effectively because only there they are explained and justified.
This is in no way accomplished by exploring the Client's Mind, that complex universe of unsuspected dimensions.
To get an idea of the complexity that is represented in the Human Mind (finally what matters least is if it is the mind of a client), it is enough to look at any one person, just ONE. The basic conclusions drawn about it may have magnitudes similar to those that could be drawn from the evaluation of all the phenomena of Nature together. If more than ONE person, you see MORE THAN ONE, many, tens of people, hundreds, thousands of people, hundreds of thousands, millions. What could be the nature of the conclusions obtained?
Man may lack the full time of existence that has been defined in this Universe, to obtain those conclusions.
Why, then, take such a winding path from the humble perspective of the world of Business and Strategy? Why do it to establish the theater of operations in the People's Mind?
For a healthy teleological eagerness ?.
The greatest truth that the Strategy respects is the effectiveness of the action, therefore it is important that a lot of load is accommodated along the way.
High levels of abstraction are not admissible for the Strategy, therefore the Client's Mind is not considered, a priori, the battlefield where the conflict will be settled.
With this, its importance is not unknown at all and it does not sin in recommending that the Strategos have the necessary knowledge (in terms of its specific function), of the intrinsic that represents the Mind of the Client and the additions to it that define the character of the Demand in the markets.
But for the rest, the Strategos must be guided by the effects that "in practice" and in the Market, cause the mental processes of people. Otherwise there would be an obligation to recommend that the Strategos be a social psychologist first and this subtracts an elementary consistency from the justification for the existence of the Strategos and its basic function: the Strategy.
Although the nature of people's mental processes cannot be clearly determined (for sure it is not known who can do it with sufficient depth and responsibility), it is possible to clearly observe and evaluate the behaviors and behaviors of these people in the markets. They establish patterns subject to pragmatic interpretations. These patterns are, in many cases, sustained over time, allowing a humble statistical interpretation and the possibility of considering them relatively predictable.
Given the existence and character of the effects produced by mental processes, it may be convenient for the method to declare the processes themselves as included in a "black box", whose existence is recognized but whose specific mechanics are established as dispensable, while its study does not condition, in the lifetime of the Strategy and in its own practice, the effectiveness of the results.
And it is not just that this can be done, because ultimately all sciences do it to preserve utility, it is something that MUST be done in order to preserve the benefits that the Strategy can give to business theory.
The Strategy itself also has protection mechanisms that prevent this type of trial from harming the results in any way, even assuming that one of them was wrong. The main protection mechanism is Experience. Few human activities take the reaches of the Experience as far as the Strategy does. And it is that he himself is nothing more than an ordered set of Experiences put into practice in a successive and consistent way.
Experience, which at the same time is a method that supports Science, is a nutrient of incomparable value for the Strategy and is perfectly applied in determining the observed and predictable behaviors of the consumer.
However, this statement becomes much more than a statement in the case of the Strategy.
The Experience, the empirical fact, surely is not an absent factor in the explanation of all human activities, but it is reinforced as support for the case of the Strategy because it lives in permanent contact with the Conflict and it prints short measures in the qualification of results, measures that do not stray far from the determination of Success and Failure. Then all experience associated with failure is discarded, especially if it has been a sustained repetition over time, and on the other hand, the experience associated with success is incorporated among the Forms to the point where it ceases to be only one.
It forms and acquires structure, becoming a Synthesis that has gone through dialectical mechanisms of rigid evaluation.
How else can the Strategic Principles be understood? They are simply (in this case humility worth), sets of experiences of men in diverse situations facing the conflict. Many of these experiences have survived thousands of years of history, demonstrating at every opportunity that they have been put into practice, their precious effectiveness.
Effectiveness is precisely the final verdict.
One of the basic Strategic Principles states that: "All action must be governed by a balance between means and ends." And as many times this precept is put to the test, the Effectiveness that is achieved as a result of their respect, will only get it to be affirmed, to the point of becoming irrefutable and thereby confirming the valuable contribution that the Experience provides to the exercise of the Strategy.
The added value of these Experiences transforms Strategy into Wisdom, that is, "prudent conduct, in-depth knowledge".
And Wisdom can perfectly replace many other types of considerations or it can be applied without fear where the instruments of evaluation are technically or methodologically insufficient. What else does the famous King Solomon, who is said to have asked God, “Show me now wisdom and science, to present myself before this people; for who can rule this your great people? ” (2 Cr, 1-10). Wisdom first and science later.
Solomon himself perceives this order of things when in Ecclesiastes, a book of the Bible whose authorship is attributed to him, he says: “If iron is blunted, and its edge is not ground, then more force must be added; but wisdom is profitable to lead ”(Ecc. 10-10). Here is the central precept: wisdom is helpful to LEAD.
And the Strategy has the wisdom to Manage what may be lacking in some technical consideration. And this leaves no room for further concern because the Experience is a faithful sentinel to remedy shortcomings and errors.
If any error or shortcoming exists when considering that the Theater of Operations where the conflict is settled, for the purposes of the interests of the Business and the Strategy, is the Market and not the Mind of the Client, the consequence may be remedied in the same way in which the method has done it for thousands of years. At least the process will find organizations in action, seeking to achieve goals and achieving success.
Now, any study of the "black box" (which for the purposes of the Strategy is made up of the Mental Processes that condition consumer attitudes in the Market), represents an asset over which the Strategy is granted full right of use. Especially as they may be factors that give competitive advantages.
For example: if the study of people's behavior had come to determine that they react favorably to the use of red public telephones and if the Sales Strategy of a Telephone Operator can use this factor beneficially to fulfill the objectives, then the strategic opinion will be oriented to the placement of telephones of this color. Point.
This does not oblige work, from the Sales Strategy, in determining the mobiles that people may have to privilege the use of red phones.
Nor does it oblige the Strategy to make a presentation of images aimed at the minds of customers, assuming that they will react positively to the offer of red phones. The Strategy will do so if previous Experience had determined this type of effect on consumer behavior in the market.
From then on, the combat will take place against a flesh and blood competitor, one that is operating in the market to hinder the strategy of "red telephones". The client's mental processes are left behind, now they are talking on the phone.
Ives H. Philoleau and Denise Barboteu-Hayotte are the French authors of a book that in Spanish is distributed under the title “Combat Marketing”, in fact the authors title their work, “Le grant combat. Get the preference of clients ”.
It is convenient to clearly establish the title of origin because later it will serve to illustrate the absolutely abusive way in which the word Marketing is used.
These authors make an important effort to address the issue of achieving or conquering the preference of clients based on the study and knowledge of their mental processes. It is not a vain effort, many of the conclusions can be found correct. The problem can appear later, when some specialist in these mental processes finds that a certain conclusion suffers from some interpretative error.
Common sense forces us to think that this is not a remote probability. To consolidate the argument, see some conclusions that this book draws:
"The preference that an individual has for one offer or another is motivated by their projects and not by their needs" (according to the authors: Second pillar of Combat marketing).
"An individual's preference for a certain brand offer is conditioned by his instincts, his knowledge, his values and his customs" (according to the authors: Second pillar of Combat Marketing).
“Marketing battles are won by the psychological movements of the images of the brand offers and not by simply reinforcing their positions. The ideas about the maneuvers must therefore precede the concepts of the offers ”(according to the authors: Fourth pillar of Combat Marketing).
"The objectives of a marketing operation are not the clients but the images of the offers of the competitors" (according to the authors: Third pillar of Combat Marketing)
A Strategos everyone from the bottom of your tent may ask:
1. How do I discriminate "projects" from "needs" among my clients? How do I do it among those people who are not yet my clients?
2. Who has established that it is Projects and not Needs that determine the preference of individuals for offers? Is it possible that this relationship is inverse or at some point reversed?
3. How do I recognize the instincts of my clients? How their knowledge, customs and values ?. To what extent will a market be segmented in order to achieve a homogeneous criterion that allows it to be classified according to these variables?
4. What is a psychological movement of brand offers?
Listening to the technical answers to these questions can be very challenging. But it will be much more useful to know the answers that the Market has established for them.
Because this is a great truth: the Market has the answer. In it, the client's preferences are manifested, regardless of whether they have as their motive the projects or the needs of the people, their instincts, their customs or their values. It may be important to know Why certain preferences have occurred rather than others, but it is more important to fully understand the expressed preferences.
The "Why" in this case enrich the analysis but do not condition the strategic attitude, because they can definitely have many more answers than those mentioned in the book. The treatment of preferences cannot, in any case, be transferred to the field of deterministic deductions. Their mobiles are huge and change with amazing speed.
In a television interview, a journalist who surely calculated to possess significant psychological knowledge asked a young homosexual why his sexual preferences. The young man busied himself along paths that led to different explanations, many of them were adjusted first to the formalism of popular knowledge, others to pseudo-scientific reasoning, finally at some point he answered: "Because I like it". And since this answer probably closed the circle of the expectations of the young homosexual but not of his interviewer, he ended up saying a clear and forceful truth: I don't know.
There can be a lot of speculation about the phones that have the preferences, however the Market is objectively showing the preferences themselves. Therefore, it is safer to work on these preferences than on the phones that they hypothetically have.
On the other hand, it is absolutely cumbersome to determine what a psychological movement is. In this sense, Strategos finds it easier to program their movements in order to "get" a certain psychological effect from them.
Finally, the “movement of the images of the offer of brands” and the “attack on the brand images that the competitors support” is a work that is carried out in the Market and from there reaches the Customer's Mind.
Probably by means of this affirmation a more conciliatory position is obtained: One works in the Market to reach the Mind of the Client.
It is unknown if the order of this conceptual relationship generates any discomfort in the scientific method, but there is certainty that it does not generate any discomfort for the Strategos, on the contrary, it gives it the indispensable possibility of having a “construction” physically present in time. and space. A Theater of Operations, finally.
References
Philoleau Ives H and Barboteu-Hayotte Denise, Combat Marketing, Editorial Oberon, Madrid Spain, 2000.
Ibidem, Pag 137.
Ibidem, Pag 157.
Ibidem, Pag 54.
