REASONS TO SUPPORT LOCALLY
When you choose to support local businesses, you’re making a positive impact in your community.
QCFindNow.com was designed to focus on an Local Scale and to help support the businesses right here close to home. When you make a concious effort stay locally with your purchases you are not only helping our cities’ economy but investing in the independent businesses that depend on us to thrive. Growing local businesses can help create better jobs for the skilled workers and make it a better place to live for all of us. QC Find Now is dedicated in making this connection easier for the consumers to find and discover the businesses that make up our founding Quad Cities and surrounding areas.
If you are looking for reasons that you should support your local businesses, here are 5 amazing reasons why!
Amazing Reasons Why You Should Support Local Businesses:
It’s the digital age after all, and the world is now truly a global village. Enterprises and corporations have more power than ever before and it seems like the big businesses can only get bigger. While there are numerous advantages to this, it seems local businesses are the major underdogs in the trend of doing business with large enterprises and national chain stores. Many people prefer to order on Amazon, than buy at the local grocery store. Or, they walk into a Wal-Mart store rather than buy from the pharmacy owned by their neighbor. It appears everyone is guilty of this one way or the other, but it is a trend we cannot allow to continue unchecked. Here are some amazing reasons why you should support your local business instead!
1. Small Businesses Create More Jobs
Estimates from the Small Business Administration show that 2 out of every 3 new job opportunities in the United States are provided by a small business. When you patronize local businesses, you would be strengthening the job creation potentials of businesses in your neighborhood. And the good thing is, the jobs created by small businesses are not accessible to just anybody. Often, the members of the local community are the major beneficiaries of such opportunities. If you are worried about the increasing number of unemployed or homeless youths in your neighborhood, your failure to patronize local businesses might just be an indirect contributor. The SBA further estimates that a 10% increase in the patronage of local businesses could significantly increase the percentage of drops created. So, the next time you think about not patronizing that local start-up, think about the number of jobs you are taking away from your community.
2. More Money Stays In The Community
Community development isn’t the exclusive task of any government or individual, but a responsibility for everyone. A community that is starved of cash cannot see any meaningful development. 13% of the money you spend or invest in a national chain comes back to the local community. If you patronize a local business, however, the percentage rises to a mammoth 43%. So, for every $100 you spend on a local business, $43 is ploughed back into the community. The $13 that comes back when you spend on a national chain pales in comparison to this figure. Local businesses channel the money back to the community through employee payments, paying for utilities, inventory supply, and other local spending by the business owner. Thus, you are contributing more to the local economy by patronizing local businesses.
3. Better Customer Service
Whether it’s a local grocery store, pharmacy or restaurant, there is no gain saying that the customer service at local businesses beat what obtains in national chains hands down. First, there is this rapport that comes naturally when a customer interacts with the owner of a business. It even gets better if this owner is your neighbor or someone you’ve been supporting for a while. Furthermore, local businesses tend to value customers more and they work hard to ensure they do not lose the ones they have. National chains on the other hand have an already wide customer base and you can naturally expect little from them in the way of services that add value. By supporting local businesses, you would be enjoying the best customer service and building strong relationships.
4. Local Business Owners Give Back To The Community
While it is true that all companies have Corporate Social Responsibilities they are required by the law to fulfill, it is hard to compare these CSRs with what small business owners do to give back to the community. Often, small business owners are residents of the community and on a personal level, they feel indebted to help the community that has helped them grow. In addition to this, residing in the community makes them familiar with the needs of the community. The projects they carry out tend to benefit the local community more. Comparing on a percentage basis, the revenue given back to the local community is more for local businesses than national chains.
5. You’ll Be Inspiring Others
The role model of many kids growing up is usually someone in the local community. Even throughout childhood, seeing an individual making a honest living through a thriving business in the local community inspires creativity. The dream of moving to big cities and searching for white-collar jobs is fuelled by a perception that local businesses do not thrive. By supporting local businesses, you would be changing this narrative and inspiring many others to look inward and implement ideas that would help solve problems in their local community.
Shopping local should not just be another cliché or social media trend. While it may be true that it is an ‘old world’ concept, the amazing benefits therein make it easy to reflect that it is a concept we have to re-adopt if we truly desire progress in our local communities. So, the next time you are thinking of buying anything or patronizing any service, search around your community and see if there is any local business you can look to instead.
