Shopping locally benefits everyone in our community
By Lethbridge Herald on November 30, 2024.
OUR OPINION
It’s that time of year again – Christmas and businesses in every community are urging – or begging – fellow residents to shop local.
Actually, that plea for local support is year-round, it just gets heightened at Christmas when businesses justifiably see the season of giving as a chance to bring in some much-needed cash to sustain their operations and stay viable.
As we’ve written often before, local media deserves to be shopped locally as well. All of us in traditional media have lost revenue due to residents shopping online at retailing giants such as Amazon for what they feel are better prices. But you get what you pay for and when you shop locally, you can see a product in your own hands, with your own eyes and determine if the quality is worth the price being asked. Online shoppers only have the reviews of others to help them with their purchases and how reliable are those reviews? Who can assure shoppers those reviews aren’t being made by the product sellers themselves?
Shopping online is risky business and more so than ever with the strike by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers overshadowing holiday merriment.
How many among us are waiting for parcels to be delivered by postal carriers or even smaller packages to arrive in the mail?
Shopping locally would relieve the worry that so many are surely feeling at this time of year with Christmas Day less than a month away.
Shopping locally has its advantages because residents don’t have to wait for delivery, they can take home their purchases immediately, saving stress and worry.
And they support the local economy by doing so. Amazon doesn’t support Lethbridge, distant companies advertising on Facebook or other social media sites don’t support the Lethbridge economy either.
Why are they getting your business? Why are you not supporting the small independent book store or clothing outlet or whatever retailer paying taxes in Lethbridge operates here?
These are local people putting their money on the line to make a living locally. They aren’t a huge corporation with deep pockets, they are your friends and neighbours whose children or grandchildren go to school with yours or play sports against them. They support the Lethbridge economy.
And so does local media. We who strive to give our varied audiences coverage of our community with smaller newsrooms than ever before are local and we have earned that local support by continuing to support our community as well.
All media outlets in this city are paying a steep price for consumer focus on online shopping just like local businesses themselves. And that’s because without strong local support, local business don’t have the strong resources to support local media.
If everyone takes a renewed effort to shop locally, we all benefit. Business, consumers, media. We all benefit if we support each other and our community. Nobody here benefits, in fact everybody loses, when we shop online. Let’s work together to make Christmas brighter for everyone by keeping our dollars local.
15-14
Regardless of all the pleas, it is called capitalism and a free market. Annnnd the big one. Personal conscious. When you value your neighbour more and their enterprise more than saving 5.00 from some on line provider there is a tremendous amount of benefit in that 5.00.