Mensuração dos custos de transação e de transformação do vinho de açaí: um estudo sobre os "batedores" de açaí no Bairro do Guamá em Belém

Abstract

“Açaí whisk” is the term popularly used to refer to the small entrepreneur who works at a fixed point of production and sale in the cities of the Northern Region of the Brazilian Amazon. It is characterized, in general, as a point where, at the same time, the processing and sale of fresh açaí pulp takes place for different segments of the popular and urban consumption market in the region. On the other hand, economic theory usually differentiates between the so-called accounting costs and economic costs, with economic costs normally considered difficult to measure. Among the modern theories used as a microeconomic basis for analyzing the cost structure of companies, we can highlight the so-called Institutionalist Theory, which has made it possible to advance in economic cost evaluation strategies, providing conditions to evaluate them quantitatively from the point of view, including the measurement of accounting costs. As an objective, efforts were made to identify and calculate the so-called transaction costs, so widely used in institutionalist analyses, and to add them to the calculations of transformation costs, and, as a consequence, to determine the cost of producing 1 liter of wine from the açaí produced in ventures associated with açaí beaters in the Metropolitan Region of Belém. The metric adopted was Activity and Time Based Costing (TDABC). According to the general objectives and to provide greater familiarity with the problem, exploratory research was used. As for the method of data collection, it was designed to use the field survey. The result shows that, in the Amazon summer, the cost of 1 liter of açaí is R$ 18.93, in the winter, it costs R$ 25.60. Furthermore, when the firm is recognized as a governance structure, and not a mere production function, the market governance structure advocated by Williamson (1985) is the most prominent, which favors cost reduction. As a limitation, the pandemic scenario and the schooling of the scouts stand out, which, in part, limited data collection. Further research is suggested on the use of açaí seed, which has, as a rule and after wine production, its disposal in the form of urban waste, as well as, among others, the measurement or valuation of the point of production and sale of acai.