28 Jun

how I avoid shopping in chain stores

No matter where you live in the USA, chain stores are everywhere, providing a shopping experience for which there are many negatives:

  • Homogeneous shopping experience that doesn’t reflect the character of the local community
  • Low variety of products, while giving the illusion of high variety due to physical store size
  • Money leaves the community and goes to a corporation somewhere whose obligation is to maximize shareholder value
  • Difficult for local businesses to compete, especially due to municipalities giving subsidies and tax breaks to large national chains due to their more predictable revenue stream for property and sales taxes
  • Stores commonly understaffed with people that lack knowledge and motivation, usually due to low pay and poor benefits

In many areas of the country, it’s very difficult to avoid them, but it’s well worth the effort and over the past 10 years, I’ve managed to find locally-owned replacements for pretty much everything I need to meet my needs. So, if you happen to live in the Santa Cruz, CA or San Jose, CA area, here are some amazing locally-owned places I’ve found.

So, try these places the next time you think about giving your business to one of these companies:

  • AMC Theaters, Century Cinemas
  • Bank of America, Washington Mutual, US Bank
  • Barnes and Noble, Borders
  • Home Depot
  • Longs, Rite-Aid, Walgreens
  • Merry Maids
  • Petco, Petsmart
  • Safeway, Whole Foods
  • Target, Wal-Mart

If you visit my Yelp page, I’ve reviewed many of the companies I’ve mentioned here and plan to get reviews up for all of them at some point.