By Anastasia Legrand – Bachelor in Business Administration Student
Without a doubt, the coronavirus pandemic has changed the world in several ways due to a considerable number of infected people and deaths in various countries of the world. These past years have made everybody change the way they used to live which is also affected businesses; nobody was prepared for what was coming. This is when business, entrepreneurs and merchants had to take drastic decisions to save their organizations or companies. This article will explore some of the changes that Costa Rican companies have suffered in this pandemic.
This pandemic has made us realize that to survive an economic crisis like this, some enterprises must change their businesses models and some other people have had to recur to completely change activities overnight to sustain themselves financially. At the beginning of the pandemic there was a global uncertainty that markets, and economies experienced which showed the negative effects on tourism companies, and restaurants, many closed or had to resort to mass layoffs. Now these restaurants have adopted a new business model, as the customers don’t go to the restaurants anymore, they have been affected with losses of up to 75 %, which is why they have implemented the use of some delivery platforms like Uber eats or Glovo, and also home delivery. Some of these businesses have implemented strategies and innovations that allow them to stay active.
When the spread started, many nations decided to take radical measures to prevent the spread of the virus and help the social distancing by forcing a lockdown and strong restrictions on gatherings and many travel bans. From that point forward a great deal of companies and SME´s have had some negative and positive results but for most businesses the effects of the coronavirus are pessimistic and hopeless, nevertheless this pandemic has given an opportunity for businesses to reinvent themselves and increase sales again.
In the case of some entrepreneurs, the use of social media platforms has helped them increase their sales by implementing a virtual way to sell that was maybe not consider before, adapting new technologies and making commerce by electronic means. Apart from the restaurants, some of the businesses that have been more affected in Costa Rica are gyms, due to the social distancing measures implemented by the government, some companies have had to make some adjustments moving their employers to work from home which has lead thousands of organizations to use video conferencing software such as Zoom and Teams.
There is no doubt that Costa Rica needed to be digitalized one way or another, therefore these new ways of selling and doing business will change the way companies work. Despite the fact that many enterprises and businesses lost a lot of money in these past months, they have found ways of reinventing themselves and continue selling through different platforms. Evidently the future is going to be digital which is why we must keep up with it to continue to be on the market. Costa Ricans that are traditional will be left behind as now the conventional way of doing business is not the same as it was two years ago.
