In A Socially Distanced Economy, Financially Distanced Consumers Need Even More Protection. (Part 1)

David Celestra Tan, MSK
18 May 2020

Part 1

In our not too distant past,social distancing implied some kind of psychological imbalance. If you are an average person you are called “praning”, “mahiyain”, or “anti-social.” If you can afford a psychiatrist, your fear of crowds gets fancier names. Avoidant Personality Disorder (APD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and a whole range of “phobias” like claustrophobia.

Yet, with the new reality of the risks of Covid-19,social distancing will define our lives, our work, our humanity, and the whole socio-economic system of our world. The new normal. Life as we knew it is being turned upside down. The millennials born into a life of a free and mobile society and just learning how to live it, will have to take a pause, relearn, and accept the constraints and restraints of a socially distanced and disciplined world. For at least three years until they find a vaccine or a clear treatment protocol. Beyond that if we have learned our lesson.

Amidst the ashes of the coronavirus conflagration, business will have to rebuild itself. On them also depends the rebuilding of the working class. It will not be easy. For it is not a question of just opening your doors and restarting your business the way it was.  The customer base that you used to count on will not be there in the quantity and frequency that your business economics depended on.

The new business normal

The business model of most industries have been obliterated, made invalid just like that. Retail rental rates assume a level of traffic that will not be there for a while. Our metrics of revenue per square meter of retail space, sales per customer, number of customers, and gross profit per sale suddenly are no longer true.  Business volume upon which our profits depend will need to be downgraded significantly. Your costs will be higher on less volume. And that is just to survive. Assuming you have deep reserves from those boom years, or get a government or bank bailout loan, how do we make money now?

Making shoppers feel safe

Bringing back customers as a minimum will require making them feel safe and clean in your establishment. Temperature detection would be perceptible both at the entrance and continuing in the inside. Anti-germ UVC and surface sanitation will have to be ubiquitous. Your aircon air needs to be sterilized and your staff made virus-free.

Surely Shopping Malls will try to bring back the good old days and do everything to draw shoppers back in. It is a matter of survival for them. They start with limiting the number of people within safe numbers. They offer you deep discounts. They will probably waive months of store rentals to store tenants so they don’t close for no stores no shoppers. Then they will start letting more people in.  Until Covic-19 cases comes back and they are shut down again.

Will there be a rise in strip malls and street shopping and restaurant rows like Morato, Capitol, and etc where customers can go to specific shops without becoming part of a whole mall crowd?

It will be a new world. But humanity and business eventually will find a way to adjust, to survive and to later flourish.

A need to banish abusive utility rates

To get there however we have to rebuild and realign ourselves, our community, our government, our business, and our society. Things will be tougher if we fail to jettison the unnecessary costs and burden of the recent past on our consumers and business. Abusive electricity, water, telecoms, and road rates.

We just cannot afford them anymore if we are to reduce our operating costs, attract manufacturing, retain our knowledge based sectors of call centers, enable our hard pressed working class to survive, and create better purchasing power for the hard earned income of our overseas workers. The BPO industry had complained about the 25% higher cost of energy, which they consume a lot in their 24/7 operations, than India. But they hang around the Philippines because of the talent of Filipino BPO workers for international communications and their adaptability in customer service.  Let us strengthen that sector by reducing the one bad handicap which is power costs. BPO is great, why saddle them with high rental rates? Do we really need POGO’s in our midst?

MatuwidnaSingilsaKuryente Consumer Alliance
matuwid.org
david.mskorg@yahoo.com.ph