Nowadays, mega supermarkets are gaining popularity, resulting in declining number of small stores. While some argue this trend has good impacts, I believe there are more disadvantages than advantages.
The reasons why many large supermarkets are being built are because of convenience and time efficiency for customers. Mega shopping centers provide extraordinary facilities such as customer services and securities that make customers comfortable and safe. These services will give a positive impression to the buyers; if they face some issues or complaints regarding the products, customer services is the key to solve this concern. If they find safety issues, such as loss of phone or wallet, the security will resolve these problems. In addition, a wide variety of products that are available in the shopping center allows people to buy anything they need in one place. People can shop for groceries, clothes, and furniture items, and even go to restaurants in supermarkets, saving their valuable time.
However, despite all the benefits of big stores, their popularity threatens the sustainability of small businesses as the high unemployment rate is inevitable, which lowers regional tax revenue. Little stores can not provide a convenience experience to their customers because they still struggle to give competitive prices and product variations. This phenomenon makes people easily shift their preference market to the big stores which makes demand for small shops reduce consistently, resulting in mass layoffs. Furthermore, the disruption of small stores also causes low tax retribution to the governments which affects local income budgets. Hence, the unpopularity of small stores has negative impacts on the stores themselves and also on the government.
In conclusion, the disadvantages of increasing number of large supermarkets outweigh the advantages. Despite all the benefits of big supermarkets such as convenience and time efficiency, I believe decreasing number of small stores has more negative impacts on employment and tax.