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The coronavirus leaves a shadow in its wake. Disrupting people’s lives and bleeding the economy between fear, inactivity and shortages. This week its effects have been felt around the world as a result of the increase in infections, the closure of educational centres, the elderly, cultural and sports centres decreed in 12 autonomous communities and the government’s call for workers to stay at home at less during the two weeks of the quarantine period. A moment that can be used by some businesses to count themselves among the few winners that the pandemic may have, at least temporarily. “It is not easy to find sectors that benefit from isolation, almost all of them are harmed, as the Stock Exchanges are reflecting. Government measures to prevent contagion leads companies to decrease their activity”. However, these are some of those who are already registering a rebound in their sales:
New Booming Businesses
- Supermarkets
- Delivery platforms
- Entertainment
- Technological
- Online education
- Pharmaceutical
- Private hospitals and medical consultations ‘online’
- Digital content
Supermarkets
Supermarkets have been overwhelmed this week before the avalanche of people who came to fill their fridges. Even some like Mercadona have momentarily paralyzed online orders for not having enough and others like Carrefour or Dia do not guarantee home delivery normally. Also Amazon, and it’s new Prime Now ran out of many foods on the same Monday. Demand grows more than 50% on the platform in food and supplies.
Already in the last week of February, the Nielsen data showed an unusual increase in Internet sales of consumer goods of 62%, and the global rise of 8.3% caused by purchases of non-perishable items and of personal hygiene to deal with insulation in homes. In the first week of March the increases will be similar, predicts Ignacio Biezma, Nielsen’s expert, and during the current week, they will skyrocket even more.
Delivery platforms
Deliveroo assures that there is an increase in the demand for home food orders that is not gigantic or only attributable to Covid-19 and they hope that the rebound continues. Glovo prefers not to answer. Analysts are clear that this type of platform will benefit from quarantine and will be able to win customers not only temporarily but in the long term if those who try their service for the first time are satisfied, as will be the case with other e-commerce sales, indicates Enrique Porta, the partner responsible for Consumer and Retail at KPMG, including food webs, so far with little penetration everywhere. They have gone from a 1.5% share to a 2.1% share and rising.
Entertainment
With children in the houses, experts know that the entertainment sector will be one of the great favourites. From video games to movies or series, through leisure applications or virtual casinos that adults will also use; all will gain supporters by the permanence of families in the home. Internet games have increased their sales in China by 50%. Around the world, it can already be seen that application downloads and the sale of streaming services have increased.
“Everything that has to do with the audiovisual sector or consumption in the home can be accelerated. And this will cause a shift in advertising towards these platforms because advertisers want to be where consumers are, looks to China, where television consumption has grown 42% with isolation, to anticipate similar behaviour around the Globe.
Both HBO and Netflix declined to comment. However, the use of on-demand services will grow, as will the additions during quarantine, among other things because the Commercial television is focused on the chronicle of the epidemic and not on entertainment, like Netflix, which has just released the third season of the Elite series. “Disney+ is going to be very angry not to have planned two weeks before its launch in Europe. He is going to miss a golden opportunity, while theatres cancel and delay releases.
Technological
Large technology giants such as Microsoft, Apple or Google see an increase in the rate of orders for software sharing products, video conferencing services and, in general, all those that facilitate business communication and telecommuting. forced employees. Microsoft offers its teleworking tools for six months at no cost. Orange and Telefónica have also improved their clients’ Internet connections for free and increased the offer of free content on their entertainment platforms.
Long distance education
As has happened in China with the closure of educational centres, distance learning companies and platforms have activated their content so that training continues, Porta says, and they will be other of those favoured by the coronavirus crisis. Many of the Spanish business schools are offering 100%, digital classes. Coursera has opened more than 3,700 of its courses for free.
Pharmaceutical
Although disinfectant masks and gels are currently out of stock in many pharmacies, increasing the turnover of the pharmaceutical companies that produce them, experts believe that this rebound is temporary. But not so in the case of large companies in the sector, with greater capacity to create a coronavirus vaccine and that sell large quantities of influenza-like Bayer or Sanofi.
Private hospitals and medical consultations ‘online’
If public health cannot respond to the coronavirus crisis, private centres will have to welcome patients, continues the AFI expert, who also sees insurers with online medical consultations and other possible beneficiaries of the quarantine.
Digital content
The digital content business is on the rise due to the epidemic. It is a good time for the media, whose audience increases due to the demand for truthful and contrasted information. The user will pay for the quality information. In addition, media campaigns such as a film or outdoor advertising are already being diverted to television and digital media.