How Shopping Small & Local Benefits Your Community

November 19, 2018

The month of November brings many festivities and one crowd favorite is SHOPPING! The Saturday after Thanksgiving is designated as Small Business Saturday. So, how does shopping small and local benefit your community? Keep reading to find out!

1. Small Businesses Give Back to the Community

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the nation’s leading small-business advocacy organization, found that a staggering number of small business owners (91%) contributed to their communities through volunteering, in-kind donations, and/or cash donations (41% did all three!). They also donate 2.5 times more than larger businesses. Of those who volunteer, many also hold offices in their fellow community organizations.

For Per Mar employees, it’s just a regular part of our culture and we have fun doing it! Here are some of the charitable organizations we support.

 

2. The Multiplier Effect

Your small business purchases help put food on your neighbors’ tables, which is a wonderful deed, but where do the rest of your local dollars go? There is something called the Multiplier Effect which, by definition, is “the boost to your local economy that results from a locally-owned independent business, owners, and employees spending business revenue within the region.” It’s made up of direct, indirect, and reduced impacts and is based on the “fact that independent locally-owned businesses recirculate a far greater percentage of revenue locally compared to absentee-owned businesses (or locally-owned franchises). In other words, going local creates more local wealth and jobs,” according to the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA).

Translated another way, the ROI on your local dollars is 48% as compared to not even 14% when spent with retail chains, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (nearly identical results to that of nine Civic Economics studies, which came later and are pictured in the graph below).

Local Economic Graph

 

 

3. Supporting Small Helps to Differentiate Your Community

When attracting visitors, most towns don’t advertise their chain stores like Walmart and McDonald’s and that’s because nearly all cities have them. Instead, they tend to show what makes their town unique, which encourages even more creativity. Supporting local and shopping small means supporting the diversity of your local market which, in turn, keeps people visiting and your community thriving!

We hope you are encouraged to shop small, not only during the holiday frenzy but year-round! Per Mar is proud to be a locally owned business supporting other locally owned and small businesses whenever possible! Please reach out for more information on our involvement in our communities.