COMMENTARY

Mom & Pop Shopping: Consumers Are Seeking Out Small Local Businesses

• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, April 29, 2024

Small local businesses have one advantage in today’s complicated marketing ecosystem: Consumers want to support them.

That’s one of the findings of the 2024 Small Business Marketing Report by VistaPrint and Wix. 

The consumers polled cite these reasons for patronizing small businesses:  

• Location and convenience — 49% 
• Product quality — 45% 
• Price — 43%
• Wanting to support local business — 41%
• Having a positive impact on my local economy — 38%

What’s more, 78% of consumers say it’s important for them to shop small, and they plan to do it more this year. Moreover,46% regularly seek out small businesses in their community.

The chief advantages as:

• Location and convenience — 49% 
• Product quality — 45% 
• Price — 43% 
• Wanting to support local business — 41%
• Having a positive impact on my local economy — 38%

How are people finding out about new businesses? Older consumers seem to prefer direct mail for this purpose: Those in the 55-64 age group cute as their leading way of discovering local businesses, whereas people in the 65+ cohort prefer flyers and direct mail. But everyone from age 18 to 54 says it’s social media. 

VistaPrint and Wix surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers and 1,000 small businesses with fewer than 50 employees, using the market research platform Corus, in March 2024.  

On the SMB side, businesses do use email, although it comes in behind other channels:

• Social media ads — 60% 
• Websites — 60% 
• SEO — 50% 
• Email — 46% 

They also invested in such marketing challenges as:

• Business cards — 50%
• Events and trade shows — 32%
• Print advertisements — 31%
• Promotional materials — 29%

The main challenges for SMBs include:

• Standing out from the competition — 53%
• Budgets — 49%
• Choosing the right marketing tactics for their business — 47%
• Lack of expertise — 24% 

At the same time, 79% are confident in their marketing knowledge, and 63% feel more sure of themselves than they did 12 months ago.