Dec
3
The Web Recession
Filed Under Brand Affinity, Economy, Finance, Newspapers, Recession, Shopping/Retail, Society
This short editorial appeared in The Guardian on 01 December, and then on the Guardian CiF site the same day. That we are facing a global recession is by no means news, it has been reported as an impending fait-a-compli by many for between six to twelve months. Nor is it news that all the accompanying problems that come with an economic downturn will have a dramatic effect on consumer confidence and behaviour. However, as the article points out, this is the first real recession since the emergence of the internet as truly mass experience, a recession “superimposed on a new phase of internet expansion, the web 2.0 boom.”
The drying up of capital and the failure of competing businesses, both big and small, is already underway and rapidly gathering momentum, but there is perhaps a grain of comfort for digital properties and brands. Although online sales have, inevitably, started to dip the use of search engines and comparison sites to buy online or bolster high street confidence has risen by up to 10% and Nielsen has reported over forty-one million visits to voucher discount sites offering money off in retail outlets. These are not digital natives searching for bargains, but the mainstream consolidating their shift to digital to search out ways of countering the hard times.
2009/10 will see the toughest financial period for nearly quarter of a century, but managed correctly brands with an unambiguous, intelligent and coherent digital strategy, the ones that have had the foresight to utilise their digital presence over the last few years to generate a genuine consumer loyalty and create a lasting dialogue, could achieve some relative benefits in the slump and weather the storm better than their purely offline, or less savvy competitors. It’s a big “if”, and it is impossible to say just how things will pan out, but one suspects that the brands that come out of this with the least damage will be the ones who have understood and taken seriously the centrality of digital in twenty-first century life. Those that have chosen to ignore the influence of digital in modern society, whether by accident, an inability to adapt or by design, may just find these tough times just that little bit tougher.
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