Businesses actively using a Buy Independent/ Buy Local (BIBL) campaign have actually benefited from stronger revenue numbers. In fact a survey showed that they actually experienced double the sales growth, over the last year, over businesses who didn't. While the survey cannot prove causality from the BIBL campaign, it does prove that the campaign works and encourages other businesses to seek this alliance. In addition, the campaign also serves to making the public more aware of their importance and power in sustaining local businesses, and made customers more loyal. In fact "the most influential community campaigns inspire residents to recognize their power and responsibility to guide the community’s future", thus hoping to change individual behavior from being a mere consumer to being a responsible citizen.
"In city after city, independent businesses are organizing and building an increasingly powerful counterweight to the big business lobby on issues as varied as tax policy and global warming. Local business alliances have now formed in over 130 cities and collectively count some 30,000 businesses as members. These alliances are calling on people to choose independent businesses and locally produced goods more often, making a compelling case that doing so is critical to rebuilding middle-class prosperity, averting environmental catastrophe, and ensuring that our daily lives are not smothered by corporate uniformity.
Driving is down in U.S. over the last two years, while data from a dozen metropolitan regions show that houses located within walking distance of local businesses have held value better than those isolated in the suburbs, where the nearest gallon of milk is a five-mile drive to a superstore." This is where local business, local living, and sustainability all work in unison.
for complete articles follow links
http://news.yourolivebranch.org/2011/02/09/5-ways-to-help-your-community-go-local/
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/a-new-deal-for-local-economies
