Most of all, focus on the branded experience that you offer your customers. Perhaps now's the time to try out some ASP services that will let you innovate without a lot of up front investment and disruption. But it is obvious that the U.S. stock market as a whole has declined dramatically and that many high tech and Internet stocks are now trading at less than half of the value the market assigned to them a year ago. It's also clear that consumer spending is off-sales of cars, refrigerators, mobile phones, and other consumer goods are down. I believe that the sharp drop in consumer spending in the last quarter of 2000 was a direct result of the high-tech stock crash in Q2 and Q3.
Consumers are investors too.
In the U.S., a large percentage of the employed population has invested in equities. Many of these investments took place through a variety of retirement savings programs. However, this crash in the value of high-tech and Internet stocks has not been confined to the U.S. market. It's a global phenomenon. They're prepared to wait out the slump, making access to growth capital as scarce as proverbial hen's teeth.