@NinS wrote:
The very small handful of takeout shops I've seen have been snatched up in minutes -- but these are likely appealing to the exsisting shopper base as they offer a free meal from a good restaurant for an easy report. I'm continually getting heavily bonused MarketForce fast food drive-through shops (four-five tmes the base) and constant offers for supermarket price checks (which are of dubious legality/ethics in my state) so I don't get the sense that demand for those shops has gone off the charts.
I think SteveSoCal could be right on this: We may see lots of bonused shops as people are still getting unemployment through end of July/early August.
The real test of whether shops dry up and fees go lower could be in August/September (or later this year). The CARES Act requires employers getting aid to keep their workers on and bring them back eventually in a few months as well. When things re-open, I think we could be in for a very rude awakening from:
a.) businesses realizing a precipitous decline in customer traffic
b.) a spike in new COVID-19 cases (leading to more/continued decline in business)
JAS's comments elsewhere about companies wanting to keep the lights on and pay staff vs. putting money into secret shopping programs could be true for a lot of industries/businesses. It's hard to tell. Curious what happened in 2008 on this front (although, that was a different type of recession)?
I think we haven't seen the worst of things for the economy yet, as we're early in the current recession/depression. Even 2008 took a couple of years to play out (from 2007 through 2009) as "things fell apart." We're still in the early stages where people may not realize or feel the economic damage yet.
Small businesses employ about half of America's private work force.
50% of small businesses had only 1 month's worth of cash on hand going into COVID-19:
[
www.businessinsider.com]
Some businesses like restaurants have even less with only 16 days worth of cash on hand on median average (from the article). What happens when they re-open with 25%...35%...or 50% less customers?
40% of Americans say they'd struggle with a $400 emergency:
[
www.cnbc.com]
Even after lockdown restrictions are lifted, one thing I've seen brought up more and more is that NO ONE can re-open the economy. The meaning is that only when consumers feel safe will they really go out. So, you can lift restrictions all you want. Businesses can re-open. However, if 50% less people show up, then that could mean the end of your business. I think this will likely happen for a lot of businesses. The economic fallout hasn't really been felt yet.
And, without jobs, people's savings will probably rise and spending will go down. That, in turn, creates a doom loop for the economy. Less spending = more job losses...which = less spending. You cannot even apply for a mortgage usually without a job (unless you have like 90% on a down payment?). It took 6 years for jobs to recover after the 2008 financial crisis. Six years (to get back to pre-recession levels). And even then, these weren't a return to good-paying jobs. The so-called "jobless recovery" post-2008 saw most new job creation in low-wage service industries.
I could imagine a repeat of the same for the 2020 recession/depression. People may have to cobble together multiple income streams for years. Secret shopping could be used to plug holes in one's finances - assuming the programs even largely exist after this COVID-19 recession/depression.
Maybe most disturbing for me is that
pre-COVID-19 people were already accepting shops at such low rates. What will they take them for if/when the shops return after potential once-in-a-century catastrophic economic damage?