1. Keep money in our community: Significantly more money re-circulates locally when purchases are made at locally owned businesses. This multiplier is due in part to locally owned businesses purchasing more often from other local businesses, service providers and farms. Research indicates that for every US$100 spent at a locally owned business, US$45 goes back into the community.
2. Support community groups: Non-profit organizations receive an average 250% more support from smaller locally-owned business owners than they do from large businesses.
3. Keep our community unique: Where we shop, where we eat and have fun - all of it makes our community home. Our one-of-a-kind businesses are an integral part of Oman’s distinctive character. Our tourism businesses also benefit. When people go on holiday they generally seek out destinations that offer them the sense of being someplace, not just anyplace.
4. Reduce environmental impact: Locally owned businesses can make more local purchases requiring less transportation. This generally means contributing less to sprawl, congestion, habitat loss and pollution.
5. Create more jobs: Local businesses are large employers and provide job opportunities.
6. Get better service: Local businesses often hire people with a better understanding of the products they are selling and take more time to get to know customers.
7. Invest in the local community: Local businesses are owned by people who live in the community, are less likely to leave, and are more invested in the community’s future.
8. Buy what you want, not what someone wants you to buy: A marketplace of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and competitive prices over the long-term.
9. Encourage local prosperity: A growing body of economic research shows that in an increasingly homogenized world, entrepreneurs and skilled workers are more likely to invest and settle in communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character.
10. Locally grown food tastes better: Food grown in your own community was probably picked within the past day or two. It's crisp, sweet and loaded with flavor. Several studies have shown that the average distance food travels from farm to plate is 1,500 miles. In a week-long (or more) delay from harvest to dinner table, sugars turn to starches, plant cells shrink, and produce loses its vitality.
