Big-box retailers have implemented high-cost mass advertising to promote their products, which fosters consumer gravitation. This causes low sales of local businesses, which leads to reduced economic resilience and job losses in the region. The solutions that can tackle this problem are offering discounts to attract people and leveraging social media for local promotion.
Firstly, the huge repercussion of this is the decline of the regional economy owing to revenue’s reduction of domestic retailers. In other words, if people mostly buy well-known products , need for local products will decline, which means that national sellers will be crowded out by large companies, lose their income, and have financial problems in maintaining their businesses and families. Secondly, the bankruptcy of these entrepreneurs leads to unemployment of workers. As a result, even more families will stay without their resources to live, which will generally decrease the region’s economy.
One of the solutions that will resolve the consumer gravitation problem is promotion through social media. In other words, it will help to raise awareness of large-scale corporations’ products ‘ externalities and highlight the unique points of local ones. Understanding what is bad and what is good navigates people towards rational choices. One more thing that can be undertaken is offering discounts on domestic goods that are going to attract customers. For example, during some local events, there will be special offers on pies from a nearby bakery that are presented under unique names for those who are subscribed to their account.
To sum up, despite the fact that most local businesses and employees suffer from rising sales of huge companies’ products due to widespread advertising, there are ways to stay afloat, such as utilising social media for promotion and offering incentives for consumers.