ABSTRACT
Most well-managed companies are winners when there is adequate consumption. But in a recession with declining consumer demand for goods and services, smaller undercapitalized businesses are squeezed out of the game at a rate of over a thousand a month; depending on which economy is under scrutiny. They are small enough to disappear without a trace, like obsolete biological species. Successful big organizations that have planned for this maintain their skills even though they may restructure to withstand the storms of the economy. In many cases they emerge from out of the storms with lower operating costs which improve their profit margins. But, meanwhile, everyone scrambles for whatever business remains, and a natural culling process takes place because there is never enough business available in a recession. Marketing-oriented companies that have established their infrastructures, their products, and their markets in good times are better prepared than those that have aimed at purely short-term goals.
