Why people don't buy local

This image is of a placard posted in a store window in Bainbridge Island, Washington, although many other places use the campaign as well, including Baltimore and commercial districts in the DC region.

Is a thread in the Retail Wire website (registration probably required), "Consumers Find Reasons Not to Shop Local Stores." The thread was sparked by this article, "Why some people don't shop local," from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which listed three reasons for not shopping from independent stores:

• Store hours - Most locally owned businesses don't have the staff to open as early or close as late as big chains.
• Returns - Chains are better at taking items back than smaller stores. While chains often take returns and refund purchases for 30 days or more, independents may only accept returns during a much shorter window and then only offer a store credit in return.
• Guilt - Some shoppers actually like not being known by store workers. That way they don't feel guilty walking out of a shop without buying anything.

The RW entry states that "obvious concerns among shoppers not explored in the Plain Dealer column are product selection, price (especially these days), cross-channel shopping options and parking."

The American Independent Business Alliance is the leading proponent of "buy local" campaigns and the organization and the campaign grew out of the Boulder Independent Business Alliance. See this story, "To Beat Recession, Indies Launch Buy-Local Push," from Business Week. It includes a gallery of logos/placards from 21 communities around the country.

The RW discussion is interesting because it gets at many of the issues that bother me about many buy local campaigns--a kind of guilt trip, without recognizing that often independent businesses may not be competitive or offer a quality experience.

On the other hand, the RW thread does not acknowledge how many advantages chains have in terms of financing, financial engineering, and market power--for example, you may not know that department stores demand money back from apparel manufacturers when they have to sell mark down prices. See "Stores and Vendors Take Their Haggling Over Payment to Court" from the New York Times.

But there are many other advantages enjoyed by chains. One that is particularly unfair is that chains will put their logos and other identity marks into a separate corporation and require each branch to pay a royalty for the use of the name. This results in stated lower profits, reducing local taxes assessed on the store. See "More States Challenge Trademark Holding Companies."

For gifts, we are making an effort to buy goods in independent stores. But I would be lying if I said that we buy most of our convenience goods in independent stores, although we do spend a fair amount at an Ace Hardware affiliate (Strosniders in Silver Spring).


Baltimore Buy Local sticker on a utility pole in Hampden.