City of North Vancouver council bought local on Monday.
Council spent $5,000 on a year-long advertising campaign engineered by Loco B.C. to sway shoppers into more locally owned stores.
While all politics may be local, a great deal of shopping takes place in multinational stores whose owners rarely grace North Vancouver, according to Katja Macura, a spokeswoman for Loco B.C., a non-profit business alliance.
Compared to the rest of Canada, British Columbia’s independent retailers have the third lowest market share in the country. Even a slight change in those figures would create an economic boon, according to Macura.
When a buyer spends a dollar at a locally owned shop, 46 cents find their way back into the local economy. When that same dollar is spent in a local branch of a multinational company, only 18 cents make it into the economy, according to Macura.
“If we shifted our purchasing more towards local businesses we would take advantage of those recirculation effects but also contribute to creating over 3,000 jobs and $94 million in wages in the B.C. economy by shifting just one per cent of our consumer purchasing,” she said.
Nearly one-third of businesses experience some positive impact in communities with buy local campaigns, according to Macura. She said she’s hoping the campaign boosts sales at local businesses by 3.5 per cent.
“Not only do consumers like local products, they actually prefer to buy from businesses in the province and even their city. They just need to make it easy to find those products,” she said.
Despite favourable word of mouth around buying local, the market share held by local businesses in B.C. dipped approximately 15 per cent between 1999 and 2010, according to Macura.
The pitch got a thumbs up from Coun. Pam Bookham, who said the program could be a way to help small businesses who have been hindered by the construction boom in the city.
“I see this as just one more way of perhaps assisting businesses like that that are impacted,” she said.
The BC Buy Local campaign is a province-wide advertisement that highlights local products through awards, digital commercials and pink BC Buy Local stickers.
The non-profit business alliance also organizes a BC Buy Local Week from Nov. 28 to Dec. 4.
