There’s a phrase that’s been cropping up in the international media with increasing regularity. It’s the ‘Good Enough Revolution’. It captures the way that consumers are behaving differently in the prevailing economic climate. People are cutting their coats to suit their cloth and in many markets, are buying ‘good enough’ rather than the best.

A recently published report by McKinsey showed that in the US, in the packaged goods sector, 18 per cent of consumers had switched to cheaper products. Of those people, 46 per cent said that the cheaper products performed better than expected. A total of 34 per cent of the switchers said that they no longer preferred the higher placed products.

Now, if those percentages seem the minority, consider that in many cases, packaged goods brands represent multi-billion pound/dollar sales and a 1 per cent shift can cut significantly into profits. So, how does all of this relate to the spa sector? And what are the potential implications for recruitment, training and development? Firstly, the spa sector is not structured like the packaged goods sector in that consumers are more limited in their ability to ‘trade down’ to cheaper options.

Yes, there are what I would call super-premium spa experiences but generally speaking the ‘entry level’ quality is high. It is more likely that consumers will drop out of the category than necessarily ‘drop-down’. There is an abundance of evidence to show that goods in premium sectors such as watches, jewellery, champagne and fashion are suffering in the current climate. If consumers are indeed dropping out of the category, a key question is ‘Will they return’? For me, there are two key dynamics in answering this question.

The first is how long the downturn will last. If, as the economists suggest, we are in for another year or so of challenging times, there is a danger that even the most loyal of consumers will get out of the ‘habit’ of the spa experience. Building on this, the second dynamic is the degree to which spas can keep in touch with their consumers and keep front of mind. It is tempting to cut back on investment in communication such as direct marketing but it is likely to end up being a false economy. All of this puts an even greater emphasis than ever on the importance of customer service.

There are two elements to this – soft and hard. The soft element is the quality of service delivered by individuals be they therapists or other staff in a spa. The hard element is the technology to support and enable continued contact with ‘lapsed’ client – not only to keep track of them but also to assess their value to the business. Both of these require investment in time and money. At a time when budgets are under significant pressure, planning at a finely detailed level is the order of the day to ensure that the level of service is well above and beyond simply ‘good enough’.