Shop Local

The 7th season of our tri-annual LoveLocal Fests kicks off on July 28, and we couldn’t be more excited to spend the day with our local community, sipping on a local craft brew, listening to local musicians play their hearts out, watching kids frolic and play, and shopping with unique and distinctive local artists, artisans, makers, and businesses…

We’ve shared in the past why big box chain stores might not be the best thing for a community, not just because they put small retail shops out of business – costing the community a lot of money and causing a net loss of jobs – but also, when they decide they aren’t making enough…

We’ve talked a lot about why shopping local is good for Cape Cod’s economy and for our local businesses, but what if we told you that shopping local is also really good for you, as an individual? We get it – modern day humans are constantly seeking ontological security (fancy terminology, we know). Ontological security…

Millennials. The word, and generation, has developed a negative connotation in our society. However, most of these concepts, judgements, and ideas about what millenials are, or aren’t, doing are coming from older generations who are quick to offer criticism, but not solutions. Millenials have been raised in a “McDonaldized” world, as we grew up things…

We had a different topic in mind for our Shop Local series this month; we were still going to focus our attention on showing why shopping local is extremely important to our community, but after writing about it for the better part of a year, we were going to shift our attention away from Amazon…

Last month we told you how Amazon makes its money, and how they use the data they gather through Amazon Web Services to manipulate which entrepreneurial ventures succeed, but have you ever considered how they intend to use the data they are collecting on you? And trust us they are collecting a TON of data…

It’s true that we have been writing a lot about Amazon lately. And though some people might think we shouldn’t be focusing on what might be perceived as “negative” matters, we feel in an economic landscape where transparency and information about certain companies isn’t readily available, it is important to educate consumers about certain aspects…

Even if you’ve never taken an economics class, you’ve definitely heard and seen the terms tax avoidance, antitrust, and monopoly thrown around on the news or in headlines on social media. What you may not have thought about is that these are all intrinsic to Amazon’s business model, whether in their startup phase, their present…

In addition to the perceived convenience of online shopping, another reason consumers give for not shopping local is that it is “more expensive” to shop at a small business than it is to shop at a big box store or online. This is certainly not a new perception, and however false it might be, it…

In our Consumer Shopping Survey, respondents noted convenience as one of the main reasons they choose e-commerce over shopping local. But how much of this convenience is perception and not 100% rooted in reality? The definition of Inconvenience is “giving trouble or causing annoyance.” So, let’s say you are an Amazon Prime member, and because…