Maeji Marie Son - Jeju
COVID-19 has grown to an unprecedented pandemic with the rapid increase in the worldwide contagion, said the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Director General, Tedros Adhanom, on March 11. Such a declaration has brought the fear of a global recession, which has affected the economy- it has plummeted and fluctuated due to repeated surges and plunges. These deepening fluctuations are shown as the individual proprietors and self ownerships are collapsing due to the virus.
However, despite all the factors, people have been adapting to the situation and transforming their businesses to restore the economy over the next few months. Eventually, they have found a solution to stabilize the economy in the short term. One of the adaptations was the transition from services that require person-to-person contact to digital systems. It is considered as one of the significant solutions as this had not just prevented the blockage of the economy’s development, but also led to an expeditious increase of profit due to cloud computing and development in IT. Hence, the businesses that were previously suffering from huge losses were now struggling less by turning to online services. For instance, people initiated the online exhibition to support the Small and Medium Enterprises(SMEs) as it became difficult to expand overseas. As a result, this support assisted the companies who are undergoing hardship and adapted companies from the outbreak.
Moreover, physical stores and shoppings adapted to the current situation by starting omnichannel retailers. According to a survey held in April 2020, the majority of shoppers prefer shopping online. As a response, top hiring firms such as Walmart, Lotte, Dickens and Canadian Tire started integrating their markets into both online and offline stores. This allowed customers to browse products, order, and pay online, which accelerated the retailers and also the customers to adapt to the current pandemic.
Secondly, social interaction due to tourism is currently banned in most countries. This problem dramatically has affected Mediterranean economies, but they were able to adapt in a certain way. As the tourism industry halted due to the pandemic, most of the tourism companies started to form a huge group of accompanies and sustain their economy by encouraging domestic and interstate travels, despite the higher health service costs. Thus, there has been a change in the service pattern as they no longer can do tour services as usual, such as a city tour. Last but not least, there are investments for supporting customers’ health and keeping the social distance in the hotel industry. This led to repairing facilities and distanced seats in buildings to reduce the capacity, which increased the service charges. In addition, transportation companies such as aviation and cruise ships also have been striving to make sure the customers are aware of social distancing during the process. However, this brought positive results as this process was done by psychological marketing of people’s belief of safety.
In conclusion, although the COVID-19 has limited economic development and led to the creation of excessive chaos in the international community, companies have been adapting to the situation. This clearly shows the possibility of how people could overcome the COVID-19 in different ways, by accepting the situation and responding instead of simply reacting to the situation.
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