{"id":8637,"date":"2014-10-20T03:26:19","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T08:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/?p=8637"},"modified":"2014-10-19T21:10:55","modified_gmt":"2014-10-20T02:10:55","slug":"customers-are-switching-to-small-retailers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/2014\/10\/customers-are-switching-to-small-retailers.html","title":{"rendered":"Customers are switching to small retailers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo

Consumers are changing their shopping behavior. It’s good news for small business. Photo by Becky McCray.<\/p><\/div>\n

Last week, we talked about how\u00a0big box retailers are getting smaller<\/a>. Why is the big box retail sector making this expensive and difficult change to smaller stores? Because consumers have already started changing.<\/p>\n

Humorist David Sedaris summed up this consumer feeling in an interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019d rather go to an actual shop \u2014 preferably a small one \u2014 than to a harshly lit superstore, or, worse still, a website,” Sedaris said. “I don\u2019t want to buy my books and my toilet paper and my clothing all under the same roof. I want beauty in my life. I want charm. I want contact with actual people. It is, for me, a large part of what makes life worth living.”<\/p>\n

A number of things point to the fact\u00a0that consumers are changing their spending to favor small retailers over large retailers.<\/p>\n

Consumer spending at small retailers is growing faster than spending at big retailers,\u00a0according to the MasterCard SpendingPulse\u2122 for Small Business. They consistently reported this trend in 2012<\/a>, 2013<\/a>\u00a0and 2014<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last year, the Deluxe Corp\u2019s Annual Holiday Shopping Survey<\/a> showed steady gains for small businesses over big box stores as a favorite place to shop. Not that small retailers are more popular overall, but that they are making steady gains.<\/p>\n

It is exactly this shift that is driving the change in big boxes. For example,\u00a0BBC News reported<\/a> that changing consumer behavior is driving huge UK retailer Tesco to build smaller shops in city centres.<\/p>\n

Consumers are tiring of the sheer amount of merchandise at big box stores, James Dion, president of Dionco Inc., a retail consulting firm based in Chicago said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We know that when customers are confronted with too much choice, they don\u2019t make a choice,” he said.<\/p>\n

This changing preference for smaller stores is good news for small towns and small stores. Individual retailers can promote their small size as a benefit, instead of thinking of it as a disadvantage. And this makes a natural benefit to mention in shop local campaigns.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re working on a shop local campaign to support your local small retail stores, you might benefit from the$9 guide to shop local campaigns in small towns<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, we talked about how\u00a0big box retailers are getting smaller. Why is the big box retail sector making this expensive and difficult change to smaller stores? Because consumers have already started changing. Humorist David Sedaris summed up this consumer feeling in an interview. “I\u2019d rather go to an actual shop \u2014 preferably a small […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":8639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,46,36],"tags":[49],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Friends-and-fiber.-Weekend-shoppers.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8637"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8637"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8641,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8637\/revisions\/8641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}