Curve Flattened, Time to Do Promos with Jute Grocery Bags

Economic revival focussing on promotions can make AU less reliant on a collective global effort to create economies of scale.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison finally announced, “Curve flattened, time to restart the economy.” Many businesses that are facing liquidation due to corona effect can heave a sigh of relief and start thinking about the revival plan. The curves he mentioned was about people infected without precautions or infected with or without social distancing. Yes, there was a curve that was rising and now the curve fell and finally becomes flat. Time to act.

Focus on promos

Those who undergo losses for a prolonged period knows the pain of cash reserves getting emptied and there is fear uncertainty everywhere. It was all about life, preserving it and sustaining the same.

Jute grocery bags are promising and businesses have realised the importance of doing promos with it for decades together. Getting one million unemployed back to work is no mean task and for that businesses need to give some motivation through promotions. And Scott Morrison should give some stimulus to businesses, relief to them by giving more time to repay the loans etc. Now the question is how to revive the demand.

Depression then, now

We all know how the Americans brought the economy back to rails by investing in public works. What was the context at that time and what is the context which lives today? On those days, the economy was not digitised. Moreover, in the Keynesian model people got cash in hand for the public works like road widening or digging wells as a result revival spread from one sector to the other finally propping up the economy.

Now the biggest service sector is banking and this sector requires stimulus that can revive other services as a result people will get purchasing power. In Australia, four sectors give maximum jobs to the populace. They are the healthcare, retail, education, and construction sectors.

Reward healthcare workers first

Sectors may vary from country to country. For example, the largest provider of jobs in India is railways. For some other country, it can be the hospitality sector. We can play with one maxim – if the health is good, everything is good. We have seen how healthcare workers sweated it out during the curve and how their services helped in flattening the curve. That is why there should a reward for healthcare workers. Let us see how can it be?

The retail sector should offer coupons and promo codes to the healthcare workers as an incentive to kickstart purchasing activity in Australia. We need to remember that due to lockdowns many were unable to buy non-essential goods and it is the right time to open the demand.

Hundreds of retail sectors workout the demand of healthcare working professionals. It can be anything like fashion, communication services, white goods, kidswear, innerwear, inverter air conditioners, anything that are of use to the workers. Retailers, on the other hand, encourage promotions with printed reusable grocery bags. This can create huge demand spikes for essential as well as non-essential products.

The government should partly bear the coupon cost on condition that first preference is on Made in Australia goods and services and in the absence of any Australian made product then customers can buy foreign goods. There should be a point system also. In this way, the government can stop flowing of cash to foreign countries.

Help students and youth

We have already combined retail with the healthcare sector and our next priority is to revive the education sector. What is happening today is students are locked at homes and their energies are about to erupt. Put it on a priority that government should encourage the banking sector to reduce the interest of student loans.

Secondly, they should heavily subsidize education aids like laptops, tab, and VR products to help youth pursue their education be at home or on campus. If the government promotes more online with less emphasis on classroom teaching where least commuting required, it can help the students to reduce the expenses and buy their favourite products be it for education or lifestyle enhancement. There should be a special package for the youth where various stakeholders like hypermarkets, fashion, accessories, IT hardware, etc., should work together and offer a package to buy products.

Give a kit

It should contain the leaflets and other awareness materials with information like how, why, products with coupons and when they opt for combined offers, they get more value. Let it be in a magazine format with a special buyer’s card, magazine, all inserted in custom bags for business and give to the students as giveaways. It will help them keep everything in one place. At the same time make students are volunteers for various community development programs in various places in Australia. For all these, there should be a network among various segments. These acts will help the youth to come out of boredom and work for a good cause.

Promote affordable housing

The government should come up with affordable housing like one hundred thousand houses for the blue-collar workers in Australia. At a time when the economy is in doldrums, it makes sense to help the native as well as the migrant communities to have their own homes partly covered by the government and the other part borne by the banks only to be deducted gradually from the working class in low EMIs. This will revive the housing sector.

Help the poor

Lastly, many are without essential items. Various stakeholders and government can come forward to help these communities with groceries. The right way is to put essential groceries that can sustain life for one week. According to The Guardian report Feb 21, 2020 one out of eight are poor in Australia. That is why exactly the government should take initiative to provide 25 kgs of essential items in hessian grocery bags to 3.25 million people who live in abject poverty.

Do wonders and lead

Where there is a willing government can do wonders. As a matter of fact, Australia can trigger a revival by doing these and pull other economies out of woes like the Americans who took the initiative during the Great Depression. Anyway, the ball is in the court of government to act and save the economy.

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