As explained earlier the transactional and contextual environment can both have great influence on any company, so also on Compass Procurement. This chapter will focus to get a better view on scenario dimensions of the contextual environment. In the case of Compass Procurement these are primarily economical and demographic dimensions. It is highly recommended for Compass Procurement to dispatch these dimensions, to adjust or anticipate in time if any changes will occur.
Economical dimension
The economical recession is ruling for more than four years now in the Western world and has led to a decrease in the purchasing power of the Dutch consumers. Everything in the economy is connected so the recession is not only tangible for the consumers, but also for banks and other companies. In this time more and more companies are forced to cut down their expenses. One of the options that is considered by a lot of companies from the moment that the recession has started is producing their products in other countries, where the production costs are considerably less. Unilever for instance, announced in 2010 to move the production of Unox soup from Oss to a place in Poland. An inevitable consequence of this is forced dismissal of employees. From CBS (Centraal Bureau Statistiek) statistics of 2009 we can see that there were twice as much people fired in the same period a year before, that is to say 88.000 employees in 2009 were fired against 44.000 in 2008. Compass Procurement has a competitive advantage in this because of the office in Shanghai, but they are still affected by the recession, because they focus on Dutch business-to-business clients.
Another economical factor that is of significance for Compass Procurement, is that China is an upcoming economy. A lot is invested in technology and education in China nowadays. This means eventually that the prices will grow there too.
Demographic dimension
Because