The signs are starting to emerge everywhere! More shoppers in the malls, crowded grocery stores, trouble making it down the mosh pit of those person filled sidewalks! Perhaps the most obvious sign being that many companies are advertising once again that they are finally hiring! So, everyone can breath a sigh of relief, right? Or wrong? Have you tried to interact with this new breed of businesses and services they provide? I have.
And a very interesting pattern seems to be emerging.
And that pattern is..
...
The convenience factor has gone way down! You stop in at the nail salon to get your eyebrows waxed only to be informed that the person in charge of doing the waxing is NOT AVAILABLE TODAY.
You call to schedule an appointment with the optometrist, only to discover that the phone number is no longer valid.
You fly to the mechanic to get some time sensitive work done on your car, only to find that the mechanic is booked straight for 2 months! I think it made obvious sense to almost everyone when businesses started to cut down on workers when the economy had suffered to the point that maintaining all employees was just not realistic.
I mean, why pay the people to work for you if the demand is not there! Yeah, makes sense.
But, what about now.
Things are starting to pick up.
We have started (ever so carefully) spending again.
Where is the convenience? How long will it take until the convenience factor has been restored? I actually believe that reviving the convenience factor is a key component in determining how well the economy really does recover.
Think about it this way, before the economy crash, consumers were used to spending lots of money in a very convenient cultural setting, am I right? As a consumer, before the economic crash, you could get any service or product that you needed pretty easily.
You had the choice of ordering the item/service or just jumping in the car and driving to the store to get it! Yep, that's convenience! And everything was included, food, beverages, specialty services, general services, etc.
Wow, we really got used to that! Before this crash, it really did seem like almost everything was right there! So, how will we faire interacting with this less than convenient current consumer environment? Well, that depends.
On? Historically, it has been small businesses that forge ahead in times like these and start reviving the convenience factor by simply meeting the consumer demand! So, how long will it be until the small business owners feel confident enough to begin to restore this convenience factor to our economy again? Well, that remains to be seen.
And, will consumers be able to interact successfully in a less than convenient economy? That also, remains to be seen.