In today’s America, many small businesses – especially those with fewer than ten employees, or about half of America’s economy – have experienced a notable transition in the marketplace resonating from the impact of the September 11, 2001 attacks, offsetting even the most practical of business models.
When a large economy experiences a significant change, strategies regarded as traditional in sales, marketing, and even operations no longer represent the most effective means of generating a consistent revenue stream.
Instead, entrepreneurs must adapt their business models to the conditions of their markets enabling buyers to make more informed choices, using a new set of purchase decision criteria as defined by their needs and income.
This mandatory shift in economic standard highlights what is perhaps the most significant aspect of free enterprise in all contrast to other economic models, and also what makes the American economy superior in the global community: flexibility.
In addition, it also a unique opportunity for the American economy to fortify itself in a way never before experienced prior to 9/11. Adopting a seller-based approach to economic stimulation can create a more durable economy that is significantly less vulnerable to terror attacks, war recessions, and budget deficits.
Renewing Perspective
Since the birth of the American economy, recessions have ended as a primary result of altering market forces relative to the recession’s cause in an effort to alter consumer spending patterns.
The market then must wait for consumers to readapt to the marketplace under more favorable conditions, basing their purchase decisions on criteria established well before the recession began.
Under severe economic circumstances, instead of awaiting consumer spending patterns to revive the market based on traditional buying trends, a deliberate effort by small businesses to realign their products and services with the current needs of the economy will give more control to the entrepreneur, deliver more effective services to the consumer, and result in more accurate purchase decisions, translating into more accurate buying trends and results in a stronger, more durable economy long term.
In assertively realigning products and services with a consumer’s altered perception of immediate need based on relevant market feedback, the buyer-seller relationship is reestablished, resonating throughout the marketplace in centrifical manner, thereby redefining the condition of the total market to a more favorable commerce environment for buyer and seller alike. Subsequently, price is again defined by supply and demand, reinstating the core economic framework by which the free enterprise system is governed.
As a result, the economy not only stabilizes, but continues to encourage fortification by residual renewal of the original inducement incentives, specifically through the progressive redefinition of the market’s drive as determined by the proactive seller as opposed to the reactive buyer. In short, the American economy is no longer fueled by scarcity, but by innovation.
Why It Works
Now more than ever, consumers make their purchase decisions based on a few generalized, yet imperative criteria:
* They want increased value for every dollar spent;
* They want access to more information when comparison shopping;
* They want a broader selection of products and services;
* They want to minimize (or altogether dissolve) opportunity cost.
Fundamental purchase decision criteria determines the relevancy of all other factors of the economy, including supply and demand. If a product or service no longer meets the need-based requirements of the consumer, supply and demand become irrelevant.
These factors remain constant conditional economic traits only in broad markets that provide required natural resources (i.e., food, electricity, or fuel), however supply and demand in these markets can become dynamic factors based on purchase decisions based on new technologies (broader selection of products and services) made available in the consumer marketplace.
In recognizing real-time purchase decision criteria as paramount to all other economic factors, including historic consumer trends as well as other dynamic and fixed variables, the result is a shift in market drive from the buyer to the seller, thereby renewing the market without the delay of a consumer-driven recovery, or the expense of incentive-based economic stimulus.
Satisfied customers can easily drive an economy for decades without requiring sellers to thoroughly evaluate conditions outside of their target markets. In essence, it’s easy for sellers become content with results based on a niche market’s buying trends and expansion due to incremental increases in population market share.
Why It’s Necessary
When a catastrophic event such as 9/11 impacts the macroeconomy, the result is an immediate contraction in dynamic economic factors that immediately and residually “starves” the market – not due to supply and demand, but rather an immediate shift in the buying trends of consumers based on a new set of purchase decision criteria.
In a nation subjected not only to a major terror attack, but also mass hurricane damage and war, severe strain on the economy can produce abnormal market activity that essentially counters recovery efforts for an extended duration resulting in severely altered consumer spending patterns, drastic increases in unemployment and debt, supply overages, increased taxes, and even temporal conversions in crime and public mental health. Without effectual, deliberate effort to rejuvenate the economy, a rate of growth great enough to drive the market into advanced stages of stabilization cannot be sustained. This “domino effect” represents one of a limited, yet significant channels of failure for the free enterprise system.
Taking the Initiative
To curtail a major economic recession and prevent a serious downfall, entrepreneurs and other professionals must work in tandem to:
* Provide a wider array of products and services;
* Seek a more realistic approach to maintaining a direct correlation between the needs of consumers and available products and services;
* Identify ways to maximize production efficiency without compromising quality, thus simultaneously reducing cost and maximizing both profit and consumer-perceived value;
* Find new and innovative ways to build relationships between products and services that compliment, instead of complete.