It’s easy to understand why most of us would be eager to move the conversation away from recession and toward recovery. Recovery is more fun to talk about. But several components of the recession are likely to impact their participants long-term. In addition to publishing full stories here on various issues, I’ve been collecting examples of these issues over the past couple of months. Here are a few examples, offered in capsule form:
Observation 1: If you lost the place you live, where do you live now? This October story in the NY Times took an extended look at people who had gone through home foreclosure.
Implications: How have family dynamics changed in your market, and in what ways might you respond? With winter’s most brutal months just ahead, what resources might be available for people in your community who are living out of vehicles? Can you help? Do you serve households that now hold multiple families in a single dwelling? What products or services do you sell that might be appreciated because of their small size—both physically and economically—for folks who are now apartment renters instead of home owners? From furniture to appliances to home electronics, there is room for sales to go up, as some people continue to scale down.
Observation 2: Income declines which are deferred, but imminent. This story from the Wall Street Journal offers a glimpse at earners that enjoyed sometimes generous severance packages after losing a job, but have since seen that cushion of cash run-out.
Implications: While very recent unemployment numbers have shown improvement, beware of those households which remain impacted by a difficult job market. There are people who have fallen from the ranks of the unemployment numbers simply because they’ve given-up on their job hunt; when taking those folks into account, true unemployment has reportedly been as high as 17.5% (see this 11/6/09 story from the NY Times). And as the WSJ story points out, some families are only now feeling the hurt from a household income that may have fallen months ago. This is one of the reasons that “the new frugality” could stick around for a while… and the recession could bounce a couple of times before taking a steadily upward trajectory. BTW: Unemployment is not an equal-opportunity experience. See this graphic from the NY Times to see how folks in your target demographic are faring.
Observation 3: Microwave cooking is way up, other forms of cooking at home are down. That’s according to this story from Media Post’s Marketing Daily.
Implications: Are you still hitting consumers with a message of convenience and time savings? I think this story indicates that just because consumers are cooking at home with greater frequency doesn’t necessarily mean they have more time on their hands. On the contrary, many folks are working harder but earning less. That bodes well for anyone offering heat-to-complete meal solutions… and it makes the recent surge in Quick Service Restaurant sales easy to understand.
As I've said before, the effects of the recession are likely to out-last the recession itself.
Mike Anderson
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