Consumers Buy Into ‘Buy Local’

BussinessWeek.com   By Kimberly Weisul
More groups are forming to send shoppers to home-grown independent businesses. But their impact on jobs is hard to quantify

Advocates say that locally owned stores spend proportionately more on payroll than chains and that buying local will save jobs. Plus, for every $100 spent at a locally owned store, $45 remains in the local economy, compared with about $13 per $100 spent at a big box, according to research by the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Austin (Tex.) consulting firm Civic Economics. That’s because independents tend to do their purchasing locally, while chains usually centralize it from a head office.

Read more here