{"id":223012,"date":"2020-06-16T16:27:23","date_gmt":"2020-06-16T20:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=223012"},"modified":"2020-06-16T16:29:04","modified_gmt":"2020-06-16T20:29:04","slug":"combo-vs-consumers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/opinion\/columns\/counterbalance\/combo-vs-consumers\/","title":{"rendered":"Combo vs. consumers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Help us keep OnCuba alive here<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

For many years, Cubans who live on the island have almost forgotten that at one or several times of the day, we metamorphose and become \u201ccustomers.\u201d<\/p>\n

By definition, a customer is a person who regularly uses the services of a professional or an enterprise or who, also with some regularity, buys some good in a commercial establishment, be it public or private. The service or the goods purchased are paid for.<\/p>\n

It is generally assumed that this act is voluntary, whoever decides to buy the good or service does so voluntarily. There is a certain degree of \u201cfreedom of choice,\u201d although in reality it is not as free as it may seem.<\/p>\n

In our country, the word \u201ccustomer\u201d disappeared from common jargon for a long time, customers were turned into \u201cusers,\u201d that is, people who use a device or object or who use a particular service.<\/p>\n

My whole family, including myself, although at that time I was a child, we were customers of Reinaldo, the grocer on the corner. Like mine, many other families in the neighborhood. But at some point in history, we stopped being customers and became \u201cusers\u201d of the service that Reinaldo used to provide once or twice a month.<\/p>\n

Today, when I get on a P-12 (bus) I am a \u201cuser\u201d of an urban transportation service, I am not a customer of the driver. But just because that\u2019s the case doesn\u2019t mean you don\u2019t deserve the best of services possible and the best of treatment.<\/p>\n

When I go to a hospital looking for relief for some pain, I become a patient, not a customer, nor strictly a user, I am, in any case, a special type of user who uses a special type of service, for which I also don\u2019t pay anything.<\/p>\n

In all these cases I am also a consumer. I consume the purchased goods, I consume the properties (physical, chemical, etc.) of the instrument\/object that I use, I consume the service that someone provides me. Note: you can be a consumer and not be a customer, you can be a consumer and not be a user.<\/p>\n

The consumer often transmits that image of being helpless, small in the face of the vastness of producers or sellers. However, a strike by consumers would make any business falter. No, we are not so helpless as consumers even though we may be highly undervalued, ignored and even deceived. We are so decisive that, without us, the consumers, nothing would work, at least in economics.<\/p>\n

I imagine a big store, let\u2019s say the largest in Havana, full of products, without selling a single one of them for six months, because consumers have decided not to buy anything from them (I know it\u2019s a lot to imagine). If that situation were to extend to all stores, then the negative multiplier effect on production would be terrible. Hence the importance that consumers have for many companies in the world and for some in Cuba, to the extreme of wanting to turn them into customers and even make them loyal to that company, to the brand, to a type of product.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s not kid ourselves, consumers\u2019 freedom of choice, that \u201ctruth\u201d so easily accepted by almost everyone in those economies that operate with a certain normality, is not that much, even when it is maintained as a basic budget of the microeconomy. Consumers are not so free to choose, even though they may decide to buy or not to buy a certain product, because their tastes and possibilities of choice are conditioned by their income level and by lots of other things where culture and the also decisive role of all the appalling propaganda and publicity apparatus that sellers display to induce you to buy.<\/p>\n

In any case, it is very difficult to deny that, when having a certain amount of money, each individual tries to distribute it in such a way as to maximize the utility that this amount of cash yields. Who better than the individual himself to decide how to distribute in the most efficient way his 10 CUC among the hot dogs, Tukola soft drinks, turkey hash, Cristal beer, etc.?<\/p>\n

However, it seems that it\u2019s also possible that it\u2019s not the individual himself who decides…ladies and gentlemen, we present to you comrade \u201cCombo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cCombo\u201d (basket of goods) had its predecessor in the famous \u201ccombo plus\u201d products, older cousins \u200b\u200bthat existed in other times, when more than customers we were, users? and we were obliged to purchase a package with different products, some of which were of no use to us, even if they were all of \u201cuse value.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCombo\u201d and \u201ccombo plus\u201d share the same gene: that of consumers\u2019 subordination to the convenience of the seller\/producer. They share another: that of inefficiency and yet another: that of incapacity. Both have a very suitable environment to prosper, that of the MONOPOLY. And the monopoly, whatever its political justification and affiliation, is the enemy of the productivity and efficiency that may have engendered it at the time. Monopolies are due to that process called concentration of production and centralization of capital, due, at least in part, to gains in productivity and efficiency. Although this is not the origin or the reason for the monopolies in Cuba, but look at the ACOPIO food collection enterprise.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that we are in a very difficult situation, that the combination of poor economic performance, excessive external dependence on strategic sectors (food and energy), blockade+Trump, debts to suppliers postponed for years and COVID-19 have put the country in an almost unprecedented situation and all this made the demand for this online shopping service to have overwhelmed the \u201cstores\u201d and put on the table the tremendous backwardness and ignorance that we have in this type of services.<\/p>\n

Env\u00edoCuba.ca: Compras virtuales, ayudas reales<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n