Wednesday’s Hibbing Daily Tribune features a Jeff Warner story about the effect of shopping locally. The story relies heavily on the comments of local business owners who have an obvious stake in keeping dollars in town.
I wrote stories like this when I was at the Hibbing paper. I did them when I worked in radio in different places as well. Every small town reporter writes stories about this stuff. On the surface, it would seem the issue is a cut and dry choice between shopping out of town and shopping in town. On that, it becomes easy to say (and repeat in a marketing campaign) that we should all “keep it local.” But reality is much more complicated. People shop out of town for selection, price and psychological excitement. When I was a kid growing up on the family junkyard outside of town, it was the “going up town” effect. It was exciting! OMG! (We didn’t say that then) Places! Things!
And that’s why downtowns struggle now. They have been beat to hell by the Wal-Mart sprawl economic trend and even the best (and very competitive) small town businesses struggle with the appearances and attitudes in their neighborhoods. I’m not picking on this story or Hibbing. It’s the same all over.
Your average consumer worries about themselves first. They want the best price, or, if they are to pay a higher price, they want to know what they’re getting for that price. But then they also want a show. Wal-Mart and Target give them a show.
In this, economic development isn’t far from good writing: show, don’t tell. Show people why they should shop downtown, don’t tell them. People have been pretty good at ignoring that dictate lo these many years. We might be entering a great time for small businesses in small towns because fuel and energy prices are eliminating some of the financial benefits of shopping in larger cities. If we can make people feel happy shopping locally, we might have something going.
Hmmm. That may be, but there appears to be a growing group of us who are reaching back for simplicity. Maybe I am a throwback but I just have no interest in the sterile environment of Walmart. The prices are better than most other retailers but I can hardly claim it is an interesting shopping experience. Gosh, give me old Mr. Jones in his store who actually has time to wait on me and cares what I think about the service over the Walmart “experience” anytime.
Amber