Mark Hodesh, owner of Downtown Home & Garden in Ann Arbor, MI says the "buy local' movement has been going on for five years. “It’s huge,” said Hodesh, who first became involved with the business in 1975. “Sometimes the only qualifier is what’s made locally.”
But the definition of “local” is different for everybody, he said. Sometimes, merely being made in the United States is enough to qualify. For example, notice General Motors' new Chevy advertisements spanning the U.S. and featuring the American history of the company. Perhaps, this relatively new buy locally consumer meme is one of the reasons investors from China (where GM sells more cars than within the U.S.) and the Middle East have accumulated a large amount of ownership shares in the new GM's IPO this month.
As the holiday shopping season takes hold, retailers are jockeying to grab a greater share of online sales, which are expected to rise 16 percent to $52 billion in 2010, according to Forrester Research.
But the influence of the Web is far greater than just direct purchases. It’s also giving consumers the ability to conduct extensive research - sometimes on their smart phones while standing in the aisle of a store - and ask their friends about products on social networking sites like Facebook.
“One of the trends we’re seeing is every purchase has been a more considered purchase, more researched,” said Larry Freed, CEO of Ann Arbor-based ForeSee Results, which conducts some 1 million surveys a month for its online retail clients. “At the end of the day, the consumer is smarter than they’ve ever been before. They’re more in control than they’ve ever been before, and they’re holding retailers accountable for a great experience.”
In online retail, the gap between the massive global players and the small, niche sellers is widening. The big guys are battling for customers by aggressively discounting goods and offering ubiquitous shipping discounts, or even free shipping in some cases.
That competition intensifies on Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving - in this case Nov. 29 - in which retailers often compete for business by offering huge discounts for web-only purchases. Amazon.com is the go-to-place for online purchases.