Posted March 1, 2014; Updated April 9, 2014
For every $100 you spend at locally owned businesses, $73 remains in the community. * Those dollars help fund local wages, local taxes and other locally owned businesses, as well as donations to local non-profits. This compares to only $43 remaining in the community when you spend $100 at a non-locally owned business. Additionally, small businesses simply work harder to earn your business through product knowledge and personal customer service. Local businesses value, respect and appreciate your patronage. You can find anything you need locally and your local businesses give back more to the community.
Remember to Shop, Dine, Live, Art, Work in the Jersey City Heights. More reasons to shop local are stated below.
1. Shopping local creates jobs.
Most new jobs in any community are often created by local businesses. They not only create employment opportunities for residents, those employees in turn spend their earnings in the local community. Small local businesses are the largest employers nationally. Shopping local helps grow the local tax base.
2. Shopping local helps build a community’s distinctiveness.
Local businesses are proportionately more generous in their support of local charities, schools and community events. Shopping local supports the non-profit sector and will have a financial impact on your community. The unique character of your local community is defined in large part by the business that reside there, and that plays a big factor in your overall satisfaction with where you live and the value of you home and property. Local business usually set up shop in the town center/ main street, providing a centralized variety that is much friendlier to a community’s walk score than out of town shopping malls. This generally means contributing less to sprawl, congestion, habitat loss and pollution.
3. Shopping local saves you money.
Local businesses are generally located in convenient parts of a community, saving you travel time and costs. A marketplace of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.
4. Shopping local goes “green” and reduces environmental impact.
The more jobs you have in your local community the less people are going to have to commute which means more time and less traffic and pollution. When you shop at locally owned businesses rather than nationally owned, more money is kept in the community because locally-owned businesses often purchase from other local businesses, service providers and farms. Shopping local also helps grow other local businesses.
5. Shopping local provides you with better customer service.
You matter more at local shops. We talk a lot about exerting influence with your purchasing choices, or “voting with your wallet.” It’s a fact that business respond to their customers but your values and desires are much more influential to you local community business than the large big box stores.
Our Collective Buying Power Shapes Neighborhoods
Recognizing that not all purchases can be made locally for a variety of reasons, consider buying first from neighborhood businesses, especially those that are locally owned and operated. But there are times when we must purchase from a nationally owned business or a business outside of Hudson County.
That said, if each consumer in an average-sized American city directed just 10% of their spending to local businesses, $235M of additional economic activity would be generated for their community.** With 652,302 residents Hudson County is no average-sized city. In fact, it would rank as the 20th largest city in the United States. Hudson County is larger than many mid-size cities, such as Boston, Washington, D.C, Portland, OR, Las Vegas and Cleveland, to name just a few.*** You can imagine our collective buying power. Lets’ put it to use right here at home.
With the diversity of products and services your neighborhood center provides, it’s easy to Shop Local. We encourage you to show neighborhood pride as you support our local economies.
* “10 Reasons to Shop Local”. GreenUPGRADER.com, accessed April 1, 2014.
** Shop Local Metrics, eLocal.com, accessed April 1, 2014
*** Become a “Localist” and Help Power Local Economies, HCCC, accessed April 8, 2014