The immediate benefit – peace of mind.
Everybody knows that just about anything can be found online at discounted prices, and not many would deny that the savings can be enticing. But what you should really be asking yourself before you click the checkout button is, “what is the real value of this low price and how can it be so cheap?”
The value of the price you pay for a product is determined by much more than just the physical item itself. Some of the things to take into consideration when comparing the price and overall value of a product between internet merchants and local retailers are:
- Physical presence – local retailers have a brick and mortar building that they have invested time and money into to provide your community with a place that you can go to to see, touch and experience the products they sell so that you can make a confident purchase. Most internet merchants are ran out of warehouses or the basement of a house and offer little to no means of qualifying you on your purchase often leading to buyer remorse.
- After the sale support – when you buy a new radio from Handcrafted Car Audio we will take the time after we install it to set your clock for you, tune it for optimum sound and teach you how to use it so you can get to enjoying right away. Internet merchants can’t sit in your car with you and show you how to pair your phone to your new bluetooth radio and if you need help operating the system, you might get somebody you can understand, after you’ve been on hold for an hour!
- Warranty – let’s just face it, sometimes things break. It may be just days after the purchase, may be months, may never happen at all! But when it does happen, it is always at the worst time; like a remote starter malfunction in August or a mobile video system failure right before your family roadtrip. If you had supported your local retailer with your purchase, you could have that product swapped out over the counter in most cases and be back to enjoying your purchase in no time. Had you bought it online, however, you’d need to pay to have the product un-installed, pay to ship it in and wait for it to come back and pay to have it re-installed again. There goes the savings right? And that is assuming that you bought it from an authorized internet retailer and even have a warranty in the first place!
The benefits of a local retailer listed above cost money for the retailer to provide and they add a real, quantifiable value to your purchase that the internet simply cannot, isn’t that worth a little more money?
The long term benefit – stabilizing your local economy and improving the quality of life.
It is easy to get caught up in our lives and lose sight of how our actions affect those around us, and that’s okay, it’s just part of modern life and doesn’t make you a bad person. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t choose to make a difference and improve your own quality of life as well as all those around you.
“For every $1 spent locally, 45 cents is reinvested into the local economy, for every $1 spent at a national chain, only 15 cents is reinvested back into your local economy” Now I am willing to bet that for every $1 spent online, nothing is reinvested into your local community. As a matter of fact, unless you buy from a local online merchant, not even sales tax get’s paid to your local community. So what does this mean?
- Public services – firefighters, police, EMT’s, school teachers and more are all funded by taxes that citizens pay into their communities through local merchants and they require these funds in order to provide the services we have come to rely upon. So, the next time you complain about that pot hole, the quality of public education or how long it took the police to arrive at your home in the middle of the night, maybe you should ask yourself “Did I do anything to help them help me? Or did I just help myself?”
- Personal Income Tax – Let’s just face it, the government is not going to just go without, they will find a way to get the funds they need. So, where can they get these funds if citizens are choosing to send their money out of the community?
Can you, just a single person, really make that much of a difference? I mean, that one online purchase isn’t going to hurt anybody right? Well it’s called the Local Multiplier Effect and it works like this.
You can see how, by working together, we can really make a difference. You can also imagine how, if the process never started, the negative effect would unfold as everybody has to make do with less and before long, bills go unpaid, tuition is unaffordable and the family vacation gets put off yet another year. It is absolutely, 100% true that…
Now, I am not saying that you should go out and spend your money at a local business simply because they are a local business, no not at all. Any retailer should have to earn your business, plain and simple. So ask yourself what the internet does to earn your business and then go out and visit a local retailer. If they have provided you with the facility to try on their clothes, play with their digital cameras or get the expert advice of their talented work force, support them with your business, they have earned it, and if you don’t, they may not be around next time you need them! Thank you for reading.
Reference and Relative Material
NY Times Article
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