Don’t Listen to What People Say, Look At What They Do
Anyone exposed to the media lately can’t escape the flood of predictions and prophecies as to what the world will look like once this crisis is over. Workspace, social relationships, environment — you name it — and everyone has an opinion about it.
And I say: don’t listed to what people say, look at what they do.
Best practices in product management states that people don’t know what they want and let alone can express in words how they want it. For product managers to build a winning product they need to constantly check user behavior by building MVPs, continuous usability testing, A/B testing and data & analysis.
I suggest we implement the same methodology when trying to predict the implications of the Corona crisis on people behavior and social structures. Namely — check what people do with their money.
Here are stock prices of leading companies in several key sectors and their performance against the S&P500 index, from Feb. 19 (the day it peaked) till now. I used S&P500 index as a benchmark to the market to clear out market-wide influences. During this time S&P 500 dropped ~18%, I adjusted the stock performance shown below in relation to that drop (e.g. if the S&P500 dropped 18% and the stock went up 20%, its performance is 2% above the benchmark index).
So, what did I find:
Ocado (online grocery) Up 33.27%
Fiverr (freelance marketplace) up 19.18%
Uber (transportation) down 16.15%
Tesla (electric cars) down 19.73%
So now, that we have the data what predictions can we make:
1. Massive rise in unemployment will lead to surge in people turning to gig economy (Fiverr).
2. Online grocery shopping is here to stay (Ocado).
3. People are going to remain home for a while now — drop in need for Uber.
4. Electric cars are considered luxury plus oil prices will remain low (Tesla).
These are my learned predictions for the near future, based on data analysis.
Now we only need to wait and see… 😊
