Early shoppers

When people shop at home nearly 70% of the money spent stays in the community. Those funds pay the wages of our friends, relation and neighbors. It expands the tax base that pays for governmental services. The local businesses are the ones that donate to the local United Way agencies, give to the schools, churches, clubs and organizations. The local merchants give to those whose homes burn, children are ill and other local charities. Internet shopping, TV shopping, or catalogue shopping does not help build our comunity. Shop at Home!

Unless you don't live in McCook then please come here and shop

Please give us reason to.

Shopping at "home" would mean shop in the area that supports you. What is good for all of SW Nebraska is godd for all communities in SW Ne (and western Ka).

It isn't feasible to pay higher prices to pad someones bottom line when you could save the money for yourself. If there were incentives, then there would be no problems doing so. But asking someone to pay higher prices because it helps their business isn't really much of an incentive.

When a person if forced to buy foreign products why choose the higher price. You can rarely find american made goods in any store anymore from the mom and pop stores to the walmarts. When facing a strict budget it is hard to justify spending 1.5-2 times the price for the same products. To me my priorities in order are family, community, country. So for the sake of my family I am often forced to abandon community backing when it comes to purchases.

You mean, you want incentive besides those businesses keeping the cash flowing in McCook, and those businesses supporting things like kids softball and the like? Well, perhaps they could afford to if they had more business coming in. Not all businesses can be like Wal-Mart and utilize cheap overseas labor and afford to buy in bulk without worrying as much about losing money on a product that doesn't sell. Those higher prices you complain about might not be able to be helped, since they likely have higher costs. They're not all just "greedy b*******" trying to get rich quick.

Also, if the "incentive" you're referring to is customer service, then I'm pretty sure most of the businesses in town have that and are quite good at it. The workers in them are human, though, and can have bad days and get upset, but they get hurt worse from a lost customer than Wal-Mart for it, because they don't have the advantage of being a faceless corporation with thousands of stores to pull revenue on. If this is what you're referring to by incentive, then it sounds like you've let a few bad experiences skew your opinion on the matter.

Judging from your opinion on the matter, I'd have to say that you aren't a local business owner. I can understand not having that sort of "comraderie" if you're not in the position to need it, but local businesses still need that spirit in customers. They try their best to inspire it, but they can't always win out against the desire to save money. Besides, I'm pretty sure they'd help pad your "bottom line" if you owned a business with services they need.

I honestly try to support local businesses. It is just hard to do a bulk of your shopping at local places and keep your head afloat. I just ticks me off when people try to make you feel bad about shopping within you means.

There are businesses that offer incentives in McCook that support cash flow into McCook. Also, it is not only businesses that give charitably.

If other stores have to raise prices due to lack of business, then it probably isn't a very viable business.

Ask them when they have sales on events such as Crazy Days if their revenue increases rather than ordinary days where their prices remain consistently higher.

This doesn't mean one is wrong for wanting to save their own money by not shopping at local stores with higher prices.

I also was not referring to customer service. I'm sure the small businesses have good customer service, but this often isn't enough.

I can probably shop in other places, save money, and still receive good customer service.

If I owned a viable business that fit a need, you could assume it could remain competitive by reducing prices which would provide more incentive to go there.

But since I am not an small business owner, I could not possibly know this right?

As a small business owner, you're almost right bberry. Small business owner must first find a niche to fit in. Then ask what and who is my competition. Then pricing, at what price levels are the customers going to want to carry the product out of the store, settle for an inferior product, or wait for shipping. And yes, competition does dictate price.

And finally, customer service. Are you dependable and honest enough for the customer to return?

Sadly, many small businesses are still trying to compete with Wal-Mart with Wal-Mart's products. And all fail.

I can certainly see bjo's point. But if you open a small business against a larger franchise selling the same goods, you are going to lose a majority of the time.

Sure prices do reflect the overhead of the business, but if you can't reduce the overhead enough to make it enticing for consumers then as I said it's probably not a very viable business.

As far as returns, you have to sell the product first before worrying about replacing it I'd imagine.