The Corona Crisis PESTLE, or
Trends we see now that will affect us in the future
► PART 2: Economics
In these highly turbulent times, the most important thing for you to do is to increase the resilience level of your company. McKinsey (03.2020): ‘In the face of these challenges, resilience is a vital necessity. Near-term issues of cash management for liquidity and solvency are clearly paramount. But soon afterward, businesses will need to act on broader resilience plans as the shock begins to upturn established industry structures, resetting competitive positions forever.’ McKinsey (04.2020): ‘And it isn’t just an economic shock: it is a shock to customer behaviours and business models too.’
This is why in PART 2: Economics of the C-crisis PESTLE we pay peculiar attention to factors that impact your company resilience. Moreover, we extend our review to new, struggling, or outdated business models.
PART 2: Economics is the second part of our Scenario Planning Corona crisis PESTLE. Check out also,
PART 1: Politics + Legal
PART 3: Social + Technological
First of all, should there be a Dilemma: To Save Lives and/or Save Livelihoods?
Investor.bg (15.04): ‘The present economic situation is not different from the time before the taperecorder and Netlix. Now we had to choose among only these two options: either people die in order to save the economy, or to save people lives, we ruin the economy. Naturally, life and health are more important. However, in my view, we can achieve both at the same time: both people to stay healthy, and not to harm the economy.
The ideal solution in this situation was to pause the economy till we solve the health issue. Next, we would have restarted it from the point where we stopped it. Thus, the only thing we would have ‘lost’ is just the time necessary to keep people live and healthy.’
►Global trade suffers
Capital (12.04): ‘According to the WTO’s Report, the coronavirus impact on trade will probably surpass the decrease caused by the Financial slowdown of 2008… The WTO’s General Director Roberto Azvedo declared that economists have devised two forecast scenarios of the effects the crisis will have on trade. The optimistic scenario forecasts speed reaction by governments that will lead to keeping the crisis under control. It previews a 13 % decrease, followed by recovery which is to start in Qs 3-4 2020. Such forecast is not guaranteed at all. Therefore, the Report figures out a far more pessimistic scenario according to which the trade decrease will reach just 1/3 of 2019 levels.
The pessimistic scenario previews such a drop in the global trade levels that could compare only to the Great Depression one, but lasting for a shorter time.
Additionally, Azavedo stated that global trade namely is of crucial importance when talking about economic recovery after the crisis. Keeping markets open and predictable is of vital significance, he said.’
► Recession
Capital (27.03): ‘Now we hope for a V-shape recession – a deep drop of business activities in Q2 and a recovery following the normalization of the situation. The point is to achieve this effect through large-scale fiscal and monetary interventions, thus avoiding the prolonged U-shaped and the long L-shaped recovery. Another aim is to escape from the threat of provoking again a 2008-like downturn, as this time the real sector could contaminate the finance sector, hence provoking credit implosion. Hithetofore,we can only guess if such a strategy will be successful and when the expected normalization will take place. Everyone is clear that the economy cannot be put on halt for more than 2-3 months. Otherwise, harms caused will not be compensated. In such circumstances of inevitability, hardly there’s anyone who can say that pouring money now to cope with the economic shock caused by the virus is unnecessary. We might argue where to direct these amounts and how much they should be, but we are clear that these monetary interventions must be truly large scale.’
Capital (03.04): ‘The most optimistic forecast is to have a V-shape recession. In such a case, we will have a deep drop of business activity in Q2, followed by a recovery when the situation comes back to normal. However, there is one condition, namely the health crisis to be put under control fairly soon and to have large-scale interventions to save businesses. This way we may escape form the prolonged U-shape recovery or the long and painful L-shape crisis exit.’
Capital (03.04): ‘The US-based consultancy company Boston Consulting Group (BCG) pays attention to the fact that in crisis situations, business leaders must track two macroeconomic topics. Firstly, what the stroke will be and what type of recovery is expected afterwards (V-, U-, or L-shape). Second, the shock intensity – depth, speed, and continuity. According to the company, the most probably recovery is a V-shape. However, it is also highly possible to reach to a U-shape recovery. Heretofore, the L-shape recover is least possible
The recovery process will depend on a number of factors such as the slowdown level of demand, whether the decrease will be like a quick shock, or will be prolonged in time; whether structural breaks in the economy will occur. According to Harvard Business Review, the good news is that as history proves the recovery process following previous pandemics such as SARS, influenza H3N2 (1968, ‘Hongkong’), influenza H2N2 (1958, ‘Asian’) and the Spanish flu of 1918, had a V-like shape.
Recessions are cyclical, rather than structural. Yet the border can be blurred, as they speed up the decay processes in unstable business models.’
► Stronger domestic supply chains.
Politico (19.03): ‘Todd N. Tucker is director of Governance Studies at the Roosevelt Institute.
The coronavirus pandemic will create move pressure on corporations to weigh the efficiency and costs/benefits of a globalized supply chain system against the robustness of a domestic-based supply chain. Switching to a more robust domestic supply chain would reduce dependence on an increasingly fractured global supply system. But while this would better ensure that people get the goods they need, this shift would likely also increase costs to corporations and consumers.’
Capital (03.04): ‘The end of supply-chains’ globalization looks real, if manufacturing facilities and delivery capacities come close to the end users.
The largest change on a macroeconomic level is the decentralization of global supply chains, as they are too dependent on China now. Many people, whether verbally or not, blame Peking for the wide virus spread. However, whether there is politics involved, or not, the virus stirs the sense of risk, stemming from the single point of failure which supposes lack of raw material delivery options. In an extreme interpretation, this could be the end of supply chains’ globalization, even more in case manufacturing facilities and delivery come close to the end user. However, the search for cost optimisation will not cease, and this supposes another highly probable scenario: distribution of manufacturing capacity in a larger number of developing countries.’
Unissu (13.04): Companies from Emerging Markets will have more business.
Mete Varas says, ‘During the crisis, cost and speed become the main criteria for companies when they consider new projects or purchases. Technology startups from EMs that previously have been struggling to reach out and close deals with retailers could expect more business in the coming months. Companies offering AI-based software solutions, retail SaaS products, and projects requiring professional services will have a better chance to be competitive.’
► Printing Money is ON
Capital (31.03): ‘The coronavirus pandemics supposes an additional correction in finance markets. It is possible to enter a new historic period of state debt. It is still not much clear what the consequences of such a period would be. The case with post-pandemics debt may be similar to the one of post-WWII time. The trials of the current crisis may stir a new wave of investments in technology and infrastructure, thus bringing to extremity the competition for available savings and state debt expenditures. Instruments for restricting interest rates growth will help governments cope with increasing expenses, particularly if additional trade-related regulation will be introduced as a result from the crisis.
‘However, it is also possible the economic growth to be hardly recovered, as this crisis differs from previous ones. Central banks, trying to secure liquidity of problematic economies, have already starting buying huge state debt. Federal Reserve buys unlimited amounts of bonds. European Central Bank has recently also stated plans to buy bonds amounting to EUR 750 billion (USD 809 billion). Slow economic recovery may force central banks to fund the growing fiscal deficits with newly-printed money. The situation in Japan in the ’90 of the last century, which was once considered a weird economic phenomenon, will replicate in many other countries. Providing funding through printing money in such a large scale with no effect on inflation will be a tipping point for our view on debt limits. However, no matter what happens, this will not be the first time to see how rules are being written anew under crisis times.’
► Large companies will become even larger
Capital (03.04): ‘Economic contractions are the capitalistic mechanism for sorting out which proves which business models are weak and have low results. In the latest three recessions, shares price of the highest quarter of USA companies has increased with avg. 6 %. At the same time the lowest quarter of companies’ share price has dropped with 44 %. Sales decline in 2020 might be even deeper, though shorter as compared to usual delays.’
► Exceptionally high unemployment rates
Capital (12.04): ‘Pandemics may lead to remuneration decrease and the lay-off of well over 1 billion empoyees, as International Labor Organisation states in a Report.’
► Mass indebtedness
Capital (27.03): ‘This is true not only for budget deficit but for corporate indebtedness, too. The latter reaches record levels on a global scale. The same is true for constantly increasing people debts too. Negative interest rates in Japan and EU will not solve the issue.’
► We will not recover in next 3 months
Capital (27.03): ‘Prof. Vasil Karaivanov from the Economic Faculty at Sofia University ‘St, Kliment Ohridsky’ states that countries may experience problems even before the end of 2020, as the forecasted budgets are based on different expectations for GDP rates, income levels, unemployment, etc. Obviously, post-crisis levels differ from the pre-crisis ones. The economy slowdown this year will lead to lower tax income available for 2021. ‘Consequently, the major shock will be next year, and the question is whether the debt spiral will commence with a low GDP growth. This proves to be the highest possible risk’, Karaivanov says to Capital.
McKinsey (04.2020): ‘Optimism about the return of demand is dangerous
Being optimistic about demand recovery is a real problem, especially for companies with working-capital or liquidity shortages and those veering toward bankruptcy. Troubled organizations are more likely to believe in a faster recovery—or a shallower downturn. Facing up to the possibility of a deeper, more protracted downturn is essential, since the options available now, before a recession sets in, may be more palatable than those available later. For example, divestments to provide needed cash can be completed at a higher price today than in a few weeks or months.’
Capital (27.03): ‘The problem is that in the decade following the previous global crisis nobody prepared free resources’ capacities available only to deal with next crises.
McKinsey (04.2020): ‘The near term is essential, but don’t lose focus on the longer term (which might be worse)
Immediate and effective response is, of course, vital. We think that companies are by and large pursuing the right set of responses, as shown in Exhibit 4. But on many of these work streams, the longer-term dimensions are even more critical. Recession may set in. The disruption of the current outbreak is shifting industry structures. Credit markets may seize up, in spite of stimulus. Supply-chain resilience will be at a premium. It may sound impossible for management teams that are already working 18-hour days, but too few are dedicating the needed time and effort to responses focused on the longer term.’
► Increased levels of Mergers & Acquisition according to Economic.bg (30.03)
INDUSTRY SECTORS
Hit, Boosted, Transformed, and completely New sectors as a result from the C-crisis
Capital (03.04): ‘Companies should anticipate different recovery speeds from different sectors. This is of no surprise hence different approaches are to be applied. In the first 2 weeks counting from the massive epidemics spread in China, share prices of all sectors steeply dropped in all sectors. However, leading industry branches like IT, MedTech and services recovered just within a few days’ time, and their shares are on the go now. The large majority of industry sectors recovered at a slower rate, but reached to their previous levels in a number of weeks. The most affected sectors as Transport, Retail, and Energy exhibit weaker recovery symptoms.’
Capital (16.04): ‘Packaging manufacturers record a considerable increase in the demand for food, medicine, and drug packages. There is a deep drop of demand from sectors such as Automobile, Furniture and Restaurants. The wide range of clients make packaging companies more flexible. However, they too anticipate to experience the negative effects from the crisis. The good news is that the raw materials they use, as well as the markets they serve, are local to a large extent, thus avoiding transport issues.’
‘IMMUNIZED’ SECTORS
‘According to a recently release evaluation by S&P Global, the packaging manufacturers are least sensitive to the coronavirus epidemics when talking about their income and operational profit levels. Such ‘immunized’ sectors are also the Utility sector and Healthcare. On the other extreme, we see the most affected industries such as Automobile manufacturers, Aviation, and Tourism.’
‘We see that the situation in Bulgaria is similar, at least when talking about larger and differentiated package manufacturers. While customers in some sectors have put their orders on halt, others need larger quantities. Major business engines at the moment are Food and Beverages manufacturers, Drug manufacturers and the Pharma industry.’
Property Forum (15.04): [T]the [Logistics] sector is better placed than any other part of real estate to weather the current storm. That is due to rapidly growing online shopping, which is fuelling demand for real estate crucial for e-commerce, such as ‘last mile’ logistics and large regional and international distribution hubs.
McKinsey (04.2020): Assets that have greater human density seem to have been the hardest hit: healthcare facilities, regional malls, lodging, and student housing have sold off considerably. By contrast, self-storage facilities, industrial facilities, and data centers have faced less-significant declines. As of April 3, by one estimate, the unlevered enterprise value of real estate assets had fallen 25 percent or more in most sectors and as much as 37 percent for lodging (the most extreme example).
Unissu (13.04): The luxury segment might be the first to recover.
Mete Varas says, ‘In fact, the luxury segment has always been the first to recover. A report prepared by Italian luxury brand consortium Altagamma, Boston Consulting Group, and Bernstein during the crisis in February quoted a consumer psychologist saying that since luxury purchases are an emotional act. “Once the immediate threat lifts, luxury consumers will come back stronger in a backlash against all the worry and anxiety they came through.” McKinsey also predicts on its “Covid-19 Facts and Insights Report” dated March 25 that apparel/fashion/luxury is the first sector to restart (late Q2/Q3) and the least hit among many others including Defense, Air & Travel, Insurance carriers, Oil & Gas and Automotive. Since there is a direct correlation between luxury shopping and the tourism industry, any delays on travel and international flights specifically will harm recovery.’
TRANSFORMED SECTORS
Capital (16.04.): ‘Different industry players change their qualification in such a way to join the fight against the coronavirus.’
Capital (16.04): ‘In addition to monetary donations, Giorgio Armani was among the first designers who changed their factories’ core activities and started the production of protection masks and protective clothes for medical staff which proved to be so lacking on a global scale. Fashion brands like Prada, Gucci, YSL, and Balenciaga joined this initiative together with two of the major ready-to-wear manufacturers, namely the Spanish giant Zara and the Swedish H&M.’
Capital (16.04): ‘The Automobile companies of Ford and General Motors will produce the emergency respiratory ventilators. According to Washington Post, the production will be ready to start in the beginning of May. The first emergency ventilators produced by Seat are already available and used in a number of Spanish hospitals. The company plans to produce 300 ventilators per day. They have also uploaded hardware information and manufacturing instructions on their website.’
NEW SECTORS
McKinsey (04.2020): From the global financial crisis, for example, assumptions about the use of assets and nature of ownership were radically overturned. Businesses became comfortable sharing assets and cocreating with customers and even competitors, and the sharing economy was born. From this archetype of “asset sharer” came some of the world’s most successful businesses, all launched in 2008–09, including Airbnb and Uber. A similar archetype emerged around the “gig economy,” which Uber also represented, along with Instacart, TaskRabbit, and others. Both these archetypes have persisted long after the financial crisis was resolved.
Unissu (13.04): Re-commerce will be the digital twin of (e)commerce.
Mete Varas: ‘Wikipedia defines re-commerce as “a process of selling previously owned, new or used products, mainly electronic devices or media such as books, through physical or online distribution channels to companies or consumers willing to repair, if necessary, and reuse, recycle or resell them afterwards.” Since the term was first used in 2005, it continues to evolve covering consumer electronics, such as smartphones, tablets, and computers to furniture, apparel, and accessories. Before, sustainability was the main reason for companies considering re-commerce. Optimizing inventory, new revenue streams as well as being proactive to new consumer behaviours might push more retailers investing in that business line in the future.
Ghost supermarkets will grow fast.
If there is one vertical this pandemic and lockdown help the most are ghost supermarkets. All preconditions are now in place for them to take off. In the short to mid-term, they will enjoy the ever-growing client base, more affordable city-center stores -warehouses-, and a readily available delivery workforce. Since most of them are in Emerging Markets, we could also expect to see them in Europe and some of the densely populated cosmopolitan cities in the US too.’
The gig economy will have a new expansion area: retail sales associates.
Customer Service has always been a critical component of all businesses. Technology helps retailers to keep their customers engaged, boost their productivity (whether it’s scheduling or communication) and make more sales. A large selection of in-store technologies enables sales associates to provide personalized service too. This crisis will put even more pressure on the retailer’s operating expenses. I expect sales associates will eventually be part of the gig economy.’
Automated Cleaning | Air-quality solutions | UV-light emitting robots
Propmodo (09.04): ‘Automation allows traditional steps required to be skipped, typically saving people time, and therefore money. But now, we need to look at automation through the lens of eliminating as many steps as possible that require human to human contact… Cleaning automation, particularly in large commercial spaces, will now be a priority. People who inhabit these spaces, and who will be inhabiting them (once the time comes to reopen offices and non-essential businesses), will want to know these places are clean and safe. Whether as workers, patrons, managers, tenants, or owners, people will be much more inquisitive about how the spaces they occupy are cleaned, not just one time to disinfect, but on a regular basis going forward.
Given the tremendous square footage of commercial spaces, cleaning automation isn’t a new concept. In fact, “cleaning is the fifth largest industry in the world,” according to Kass Dawson, the Head of Strategy and Marketing Communications at Softbank Robotics.
Cleaning automation doesn’t always require robots, either. Another company Microshare deploys sensors for all kinds of uses within healthcare facilities to help automate a number of things, one of which can be to alert the facility when more than just a routine cleaning might be needed. Push button sensors can be used in operating rooms as a way for staff to signal when a deep clean might be needed after a person with an infectious disease was treated in the space. Other sensors are able to read and transmit air temperature and water quality data, which can be used to determine predictive cleaning patterns as well as set optimal conditions for disease transmission reduction.’
HIT SECTORS
Capital (12.04): ‘In accordance with the report data the four most affected sectors on a global scale are accommodation and food facilities, manufacturing, retail, and business and administrative services.’
Travel & Tourism
Dragontrail (01.04): ‘The China Tourism Academy’s “Chinese Post-Virus Sentiment Report: 15 Observations and Discoveries About Travel” addresses Chinese tourism after the COVID-19 crisis, including consumers’ worries and plans, and when and where they want to travel.
- Self-driving, no flights
- Travel has never been out of heart
- Traveling mainly on relaxing vacation and sightseeing tours
- Domestic destinations, close to home, among nature, with their elderly relatives
- When involving in group tourism, there is a ‘new-style’ group tourism like private family groups (37 %). Additionally, there is an increase of up to 18 % in Chinese who opted for personalized, customized travel.
- An enormous rise in travel insurance purchase (74 % of all respondents)
1) Travel was one of the leading topics that people cared about during the virus, and demand is still high – 40% of survey respondents said they were still reading information about travel and travel discounts often during the crisis period; 40% read it sometimes; 10% actually paid for a travel deal during the crisis period; and only 10% didn’t follow any information about travel.
3) When asked about their goals for post-virus travel, 30% chose relaxing vacation, 24% chose sightseeing and tours, and 9% chose culture and education.
4) Most respondents said that their first form of travel after the virus would be domestic, with most sticking close to home.
12) 45% of respondents said they would opt for FIT, 37% for group tourism (including “new-style” group tourism like private family groups), and 18% opted for personalized, customized travel – a notable increase.
13) In the past, most people did not buy travel insurance, but this has changed dramatically. 74% of survey respondents said they would buy travel insurance in the future, only 17% said they did not plan to buy it, and 9% said they weren’t sure.
McKinsey (04.2020): Even a short moratorium on business travel could have lasting impact when alternatives such as video conferences prove sufficient or even preferrable. Near-shoring of supply chains may further reduce demand for cross-border business travel, and consumers who are afraid of traveling overseas may shift leisure travel to local destinations.
Capital (13.04.2020): Light in the tunnel for some sectors only.
According to a McKinsey report the sector of consumer electronics has the potential to recover quickly in Q2 2020. Challenges in the Asian part of the supply chain of electronics may force the sector to rearrange its vendors, thus diversifying suppliers and subcontractors. However, the forecast supports a quick sales levels recovery.
‘Forecasts for Aviation, Tourism and related sectors are dark. McKinsey experts anticipate that internal flights will recover within 2 moths’ time, and the rest within a year’s period.
‘Summer tourism most probably will record a zero-level year. The sector and all related branches may anticipate some improvement only in Q4… The Tourism recovery will be most possibly delayed for the winter season. However, there is a risk of a new contamination wave anticipated for the same period of time.’
Unissu (13.04): It will take a long time for people to go back to Malls.
Mete Varas says that ‘In some countries, shopping centers have more meaning and function than shopping. They also function as a societal meeting and interaction points. The magnitude of this outbreak is a traumatic event that is almost beyond comprehension. When self-isolation ends soon, we should not expect people to rush into concerts, stadiums and shopping centers right away. Shortly, shopping centers will invest/promote more on traditional or even advanced technologies offering good hygiene practices. Just like the security checks at the airports, visitors might be required to measure their temperatures or ask for permission to access the app monitoring their vital data history. (Note that it’s already been a standard procedure to pass through X-ray checks entering malls, stadiums, commercial buildings for many years in many countries.)
‘One can argue that people’s immediate reaction to the over month-long lockdown is to go out, do at least window shopping or do what it’s called “shopping therapy”. Yes, that’s true but there is a high probability that high-streets, open-air shopping centers will be preferred more -along with parks, forests, and beaches. Initial post-pandemic customer habits from Beijing show us that people are reluctant to go out. Those who visit bars are less but they drink more.
Repurposing the abandoned malls will continue to evolve.
‘Dead malls, retail apocalypse, store closures… Those were the headlines we kept reading for years much before the outbreak starts. Shopping centers have been taking steps to overcome this downward trend by repositioning, changing brand mix (less food court more fine dining, more co-working areas, larger gyms) or repurposing (turning into residential units, hotels or schools). Since food sustainability, health, last-mile logistics are some of the hottest topics in the coming mid-term, we might see complete or partial repurposing projects including vertical farms, clinics, cloud kitchens, and cloud supermarkets.’
McKinsey (04.2020): The shift to e-commerce may also further boost already high demands for industrial space. Relatively niche asset classes (such as self-storage and cloud kitchens) could see an improvement in their unit economics, as demand density goes up when more people work from home, while other asset classes (such as co-living) may suffer.
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BUSINESS MODELS
The current crisis is ‘a structural break’, i.e. it changes the sources of competitive advantage as a result of thorough reshaping of certain industries. McKinsey (12.2008): The wrong way forward in a structural break during hard times is to try more of the same. The break and the hard times are sure indications that an old pattern has already been pushed to its limits and is destroying value.
‘And it isn’t just an economic shock: it is a shock to customer behaviours and business models too.’ McKinsey (04.2020)
McKinsey (04.2020): The extraordinary constraints and imperatives brought on by the COVID-19 crisis have rapidly thrust businesses into challenges they could never have envisioned. Many have had to innovate new capabilities for remote operation almost overnight, complete digital transformations in weeks rather than months or years, and launch new products in a matter of days.
McKinsey (12.2008): Consider an analogy. When oil is cheap and plentiful, we create a vast infrastructure that works well if oil remains cheap and plentiful. When it becomes expensive, we wish we had a different infrastructure. Similarly, when economic opportunities abound, we invest in a management infrastructure that harvests them very well. When the field of opportunities becomes less verdant, we must change our management infrastructure.
McKinsey (12.2008): In the years since, most companies have indeed grown. They have also spent money on increasingly complex overhead structures to address the diversity of products and geographies and the demands of employees and governments. Now, in hard times, scope and variety will be cut, but costs won’t automatically follow. The costs of managing scope and variety have been baked into the infrastructure—IT systems, sourcing systems, and processes for designing and marketing new products.
So during structural breaks in hard times, cutting costs isn’t enough. Things have to be done differently, and on two levels: reducing the complexity of corporate structures and transforming business models. At the corporate level, the first commandment is to simplify and simplify again. Since companies must become more modular and diverse, eliminate coordinating committees, review boards, and other mechanisms connecting businesses, products, or geographies. The aim of these cuts is to provide lean central and support services that don’t require business units to spend time and energy coordinating their activities. Break larger units into smaller ones to reveal cross-subsidies and to break political blockades.
Then start reforming individual businesses. There is a large and useful body of knowledge about how to go about doing so, and this is not the place to reprise it. In general terms, the first task is to understand how a business has survived, competed, and made money in the past. Don’t settle for PowerPoint bar charts and graphs. If the business is too complex to comprehend, break it into comprehensible parts. Once you gain this critical understanding, you can start the work of reshaping. There is no magic formula. Reforming a business always takes insight and imagination.
► Shift from product to product+service
Businesscloud co.uk (18.03): “The difference now is that the customer no longer needs your product. He has to be persuaded of its value.”
A shift in real estate companies from product to service-based is another industry shift the roundtable agreed on.
► Rental and Subscription Models
Unissu (13.04):
Mete Varas says, ‘The 2008 crisis gave us a new business concept; private shopping. An online private shopping web site is a members-only shopping club, where members can buy goods at high discounts. The business model became so successful that almost every country had one or two local players next to a couple of global players. Consumers enjoyed fashion and luxury goods at desirable pricing (50–70% off) whilst brands have a direct connection with heavy buyers and a clever way to minimize their inventory.
I expect that the Covid-19 crisis could trigger other new online business models that were taking baby steps in recent years; which will include some form of rental and subscription revenue streams. There are several companies providing designer dress and accessory rentals. As an alternative, some startups launched “Airbnb for closets” type of businesses for almost unlimited inventory. Several brands (even Nike) launched their rental services too. Thanks to changing habits, affordability issues and blurred lines between online/offline shopping, we might witness more brands launch their rental services while native rental companies will likely gain more traction in the coming era.’
McKinsey (04.2020): ‘One notable feature of the COVID-19 crisis is a radical shift to distance business models… As a result, should you now accelerate your investments in a digital business model? Do you need to scale back your capital-investment plans focused on increasing your physical footprint and instead secure bandwidth to host your virtualized business?’
► Virtual customer engagement
McKinsey (04.2020): ‘As the COVID-19 crisis wore on in China, the real estate market, like other sectors, suffered a rapid decline as the buying public sequestered itself at home. The Evergrande Real Estate Group, China’s second-largest real estate developer, responded by creating a digital-only experience, allowing customers to engage entirely online and make refundable deposits on properties, overturning long-held assumptions about the need for in-person meetings. Evergrande saw sales soar by 118 percent in February after it launched the new application. Along with others, the firm is pushing on how much of the customer journey can be handled remotely and how much data can be shared.’
► Six early archetypes of post-crisis business builders
McKinsey (04.2020) have identified six early archetypes for post-crisis business builders.
- The remote service provider.
- The collaboration platform.
- The dynamic talent deployer.
- The high-touch digital retailer.
- The data visionary.
- The resilient and flexible but not redundant operator.
What each one archetype means, see here.
MORE
What is the impact of the lockdown period on the Bulgarian economy, see here > Капитал (04.2020)
McKinsey (03 2020) At the heart of a crisis: How consumer-health companies can lead in the time of the coronavirus – link
McKinsey (03 2020) Private equity and the new reality of coronavirus – link
Coronavirus business impact: Data-driven insights for brands during COVID-19 – write us at hello@spbusinesslab.com
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► Already published:
Scenario Planning for lockdown business people, or What to do till the dust in the air settles
Cinemas are closed till real life feels like a movie, or Which trends during the corona crisis are clear
The Corona Crisis PESTLE, or Trends we see now that will affect us in the future (in 3 parts)
PART 3: Social | Technological
► Next comes:
Race against Time, or What to do right now as soon as possible?
The RE-gnosis, or How to bridge the gap from the future to the present?
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