There’s a new buzzword, or term that is being bounded around - the digital divide. This term is being used by the government and agencies to describe the gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology, and those without access to it. It includes the imbalances in physical access to technology as well as the imbalances in resources and skills needed to effectively participate as a digital citizen. And there is new focus on closing this divide.
Assisting people to access IT who might not otherwise have been able to, has been one of our long-term goals. We have achieved this in two ways: through our computer suite and training department and also with our sales of refurbished computers. Although our sales room is open to all, our target market group for computer sales has actually been a mixture of low-income families and individuals, and students.
We have been successful in reaching low-income groups over the years we have been operating, but one question that comes up time and time again is:
‘Can I pay by instalments?’
And this creates an ethical dilemma. On the one hand, we want to make the buying process easy and accessible to the masses, but on the other hand we want to be responsible when it comes to money matters.
We specifically target individuals that don’t have a large disposable income, who may be challenged with a weekly struggle to make ends meet. The question is whether allowing ‘credit’ is helpful or whether this will have a compounding impact on the issues our customers may already be facing.
You might say that it should be down to the consumer to manage their own finances and in fact none of our business – but isn’t this the kind of culture that has led to the credit crunch?
If our customers can’t afford our products, when these are the audience we’re targeting, I’m in favour of reviewing the products and seeing what we can do about bringing the price down! And that’s exactly what we’ve done this month…
Due to a special offer we are running, our customers will now be able to buy a computer package for £30. It’s a basic package of hardware – base unit, monitor, keyboard & mouse, but it’s all tested and comes with a warranty. All that the customer has to do is source their own software and install it and with Open Source software freely available, this can be achieved for zero pence – we can even make a disk up if customers need one! We’re also looking at the possibility of providing cheap 1-2-1 sessions to our customers, to give them a quick overview of computer maintenance.
And this seems a far more ethical approach than offering credit.
