5 Reasons Small Businesses are Struggling to gain support in a Shop Local Effort…

Small businesses all across Canada and the USA are struggling to gain support and compete with the big online retailers.

Today more than ever, retailers are promoting the idea of shopping local to consumers. Their very survival depends on it. Yet most consumers simply see no reason to shop local. So why are consumers apathetic about “shop local”?

1. Price.

With limited budgets, consumers generally look for the best deal.
This is something very difficult to do online since many retailers do not have a good website that lists their products and their prices. In years gone by many resorted to shopping on Ebay.

Today, that has shifted to companies like Amazon who many assume offer the best prices. I have personally done a number of comparisons of prices on Amazon verses some of my local retail stores and on numerous occasions found that I could get it at the same price and sometimes cheaper locally – especially when the local stores have sales events.

2. Convenience.

Ease of finding what you are looking for.

For example, Last Christmas my daughter wanted a certain coffee mug sold by Starbucks. We like to support local stores so decided to shop local for it. We had to personally visit all 7 stores in our city to find it – but were still unsuccessful. Who generally has the time to do that?

It’s so much easier to go to a single website, search what you are looking for and order it. Even if a local store has an online e-commerce store with all their products (which most don’t) it is very cumbersome and difficult to shop local without the tedious driving from store to store.

Now with the advent of store closures due to Covid-19 restrictions this has become even more difficult. Shop local has all but disappeared in favor of online buying.

3. People don’t even know what’s available in their own city or town.

Where does one begin to shop local? When you want an item which store carries it? This has resulted in many wasteful hours browsing (often big box stores) or malls to try to find what is desired. Men especially hate this method of shopping. If they are going to shop local, then they need to know who has what they are looking for and go straight there to get it and then go home.

4. Time constraints.

Even if people were online shoppers and wanted to shop local, they could spend many hours trying to find websites of local stores and seeing if they can order what they are looking for from their website. Since most ret retailers do not have such a website to begin with, it is extremely time-consuming searching through website after website.

It’s far easier to go to one site (like Amazon), find what you want and order it. Then have it delivered right to your door within a couple of days or so.

5. Covid-19 restrictions and frustrations.

Most retailers were closed completely due to the pandemic restrictions imposed by governments. This rendered shoppers no possible way to shop local. But even when restrictions were eased many still didn’t re-open because of customer restrictions and the huge cost of signage and plastic barriers were too much for some.

Shop local has now become even more tedious because of long line-ups (due to customer count restrictions), some who demand wearing masks which frustrates many who see no reason for such demands and reduced store hours.

So, what can smaller retailers do to get their customers to want to shop local? If they do nothing, then nothing will change and companies like Walmart, Amazon and others will take most of the business away from the small retailers.

The fact is most people like to shop at big box stores or malls only because they can often find what they are looking for in one place. Who has the time to go from store to store looking for an item? But there is a solution. An online Mall that will overcome all the obstacles preventing consumers from shopping locally as mentioned above.

The Online “Shop Local” Solution for the Small Business wwMalls is the answer.

WWMalls has developed a one stop website for every city in North America over 50,000 in population where local retailers and list all their products for sale.

Consumers can shop local in their own city from the convenience of their computer or smart phone. And wwmalls will have that item delivered to the consumer the same day making it as convenient as Amazon, but faster and supporting local retailers. Most consumers would like to shop local but for reasons mentioned above simply don’t.

If you are a retailer and want to promote shop local, then this is how you can do it and make it as convenient as Amazon, but faster and supporting local retailers. Most consumers would like to shop local but for reasons mentioned above simply don’t.

If you are a retailer and want to promote shop local, then this is how you can do it and actually get results.

wwMalls.com is committed to your success and motivating people to shop local online.