We have experienced severe obstacles as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic, and the majority of people’s everyday lives have changed dramatically in the last year. “When will everything return to normal?” is a burning question on everyone’s mind. The narrator asks, “What can we anticipate in the future?” “What can we expect in the future?” and “What can we anticipate in the future?” are two questions that come to mind.
On primary research calls, our industry analysts hear these questions from organizations, and they are a major emphasis for our clients. They’re also on our minds at The Freedonia Group, a leading worldwide industrial research firm and a MarketResearch.com associate.
The Challenge of Market Forecasting
Predicting the future is never simple, especially when people are involved. Humans aren’t always rational in their judgments. They don’t always make the most rational decision. And changing basic human nature is difficult. Companies are no exception. They may stray from their business goals in the short term for a variety of reasons, but they will eventually return to their fundamental goal of profitability.
When people talk about the pandemic’s impact or read tales about how it will change the future, some people claim that COVID has rewritten society’s core structure and how businesses operate. For the last 36 years, our Industry Studies team has been tracking the growth of global industries and has a thorough understanding of business cyclicality and consumer motivation.
When we think about the pandemic, we might see it as a catalyst for change that was already happening. It is bringing to light existing concerns that companies or people have pushed under the rug to be addressed later and forcing them to do so immediately.
Some of the most well-known impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic include:
Manufacturing supply chains are faltering, resulting in product shortages.
Retail purchases on the internet are exploding.
The foodservice industry is experiencing a change.
Working from home is becoming more popular.
The COVID outbreak has exacerbated or uncovered problems that existed before in all of these scenarios.
Supply Chain Issues and Product Shortages
While several countries are reopening and lowering virus levels, food shortages are becoming increasingly common. Some of these shortages have resulted from pandemic-related short-term surges in demand, such as increased spending on home repairs or new home purchases by customers with government stimulus money to spend who are now working from home and want to make changes.
In other cases, however, the shortages show problems with today’s supply networks, especially the problematic combination of just-in-time manufacturing processes with supply chains that concentrate production in just a few regions across the world, most notably China. This situation is the result of decades of company moves to lower-cost developing countries in search of better profitability. While these approaches are efficient and lucrative, they also increase the risk of shortages if the producing countries have difficulties, as the COVID outbreak has shown.
Soaring E-Commerce Retail Sales
The transition from brick-and-mortar to e-commerce, as well as the movement in the foodservice industry toward take-out and home delivery, had already begun a decade ago, but the pandemic has hastened the process dramatically. Restaurants expanded their takeout and delivery options, and consumers who had never considered food delivery before joined in during the pandemic, which impacted the foodservice industry in particular. While delivery services like DoorDash and GrubHub gained in popularity, restaurant menus, premises, and workers changed.
The Rise of Remote Work During COVID
Finally, one of the most significant changes in numerous industries is the transition toward an at-home workforce, which has implications for a wide range of business and consumer products and services. This trend, on the other hand, existed prior to COVID. When the pandemic started, the US Census Bureau predicted that up to a third of all US employment and more than half of “information workers” would work from home. Working from home was often listed in surveys as one of the top desires or benefits of workers.
As a consequence of the outbreak, businesses who had previously been unwilling to allow workers to work from home were forced to do so in order to stay in business. In many cases, they noticed that the transition was nearly seamless. The adjustment was largely well received by employees, and some firms were able to save money as a consequence.
As a result, after the pandemic has passed, the new normal will very definitely include a higher proportion of people working from home than ever before. Attaining that level necessitates striking a balance between corporate profit and human nature.
Avoiding the Trap of Overgeneralization
As we’ve seen patterns over the previous year, the final conclusion is that you can’t generalize about the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak since it has touched different people and companies.
Various items or marketplaces within sectors have different stories to tell. While GDP, consumer income, and construction investment statistics reflect the virus’s overall impact, they mask the specific challenges that people and businesses must overcome in order to go forward.
Given all of the things that have changed as a consequence of COVID, we must assess how many of these changes will endure as we work on short- and long-term estimates. The answers will change as the epidemic progresses and the recovery gains momentum in various sections of the United States and the world.
Teresa Hayes is Vice President of Publishing at The Freedonia Group, a major industrial research organization and a MarketResearch.com affiliate. Visit the COVID-19 Economic Impact Tracker for current figures and expert comments from industry professionals, or download Teresa’s newest white paper on how the chip shortage may affect how automobiles are made.
