Here are the top 10 reasons to support your local ma and pop stores. It is so important this time of year to remember the importance of supporting local businesses when you do your holiday shopping. I know its very convenient to shop big box or online at places like Amazon for your Christmas presents, however there are so many more community benefits to shopping locally and support your community.
Local Character and Prosperity – Communities that keep their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character have an economic advantage.
Community Well-Being
Locally owned businesses build strong communities by linking neighbors in a web of economic and social relationships, and contributing to local charities and causes.
Local Decision-Making
Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.
Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy
Compared to chain stores, locally owned businesses dump a bigger chunk of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the whole community.
Job and Wages
Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some areas provide better pay and benefits than big chains do. This is a huge hometown advantage.
Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship fuels America’s economic innovation, individuality and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of lower paying jobs and into a higher socio-economic status.
Public Benefits and Costs
Local stores in small towns require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls.
Environmental Sustainability
Local stores help to sustain vibrant, walkable and easily accesible towns-which are essential to reducing carbon footprint with regard to air and water pollution and automobile use.
Local Competition
A market filled with many small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over a longer period of time. If you have 3-4 women’s clothing boutiques (carrying similar brands) on a main street going through a small town, this is primarily what will foster healthy price competitiveness and the consumer always benefits from this in the form of dollars saved.
Unique Product Offering and Diversity
For our clinic specifically, we are able to tailor and offer specific eyeglass brands that our patients request. We do not have to adhere to a nationally based corporate policy of having to offer certain brands based on national sales.