Top 10 Reasons to Shop Locally

1. Local Character and Prosperity
In an increasingly homogenized world, communities that preserve their one-of-akind
businesses and distinctive character have an economic advantage.
2. Community Well-Being
Locally owned businesses build strong communities by sustaining vibrant town
centers, linking neighbors in a web of economic and social relationships, and
contributing to local causes.
3. Local Decision-Making
Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally by people
who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.

4. Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy
Compared to chain stores, locally owned businesses recycle a much larger share
of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the whole community.
5. Job and Wages
Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide
better wages and benefits than chains do.
6. Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship fuels America’s economic innovation and prosperity, and
serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the
middle class.
7. Public Benefits and Costs
Top 10 Reasons to Support Locally Owned
Businesses
Local stores in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure and make
more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping
malls.
8. Environmental Sustainability
Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers-which in
turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and
water pollution.
9. Competition
A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure
innovation and low prices over the long-term.
10. Product Diversity
A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national
sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers,
guarantees a much broader range of product choices.