These days, the existence of large supermarkets and online shops is dominating, making it difficult for the smaller ones to keep up with them. This essay will examine this implication to local communities and measures to improve this issue.
First of all, both developments of big supermarkets and online shops create huge disparities in society. Local small businesses are losing their attraction as well as customers, resulting in not being able to generate income to fulfil their daily expenses. Moreover, they have to establish a joint venture with a supermarket by renting a space by paying a huge amount of cost to the owner. In addition, a statistic in the UK depicts that renting businesses contribute 30% of all causes of disparity in a nation.
For this reason, it is crucial for government to take immediate action as a response. One of them is by providing spaces for local communities and promoting the area to society. This can be done by searching for a strategic location and transforming it into a mass shopping centre. After that, the government should promote this new place by inviting many local shops and stakeholders to work together. For instance, in Semarang city in Indonesia, there is a road called Pecinan which consists of many old buildings, and it then transformed into a whole new food centre that is famous for selling numerous traditional foods.
In conclusion, the development of online shops and large supermarkets is significantly causing social disparities , especially with local shops, and the government should provide places for them and promote them.