Russ Steele
Greg Moberly writes in today's Union.
A long-awaited "shop locally" campaign kicks off Monday to get businesses - and later customers - behind the effort. The campaign comes as an estimated one-third of residents' shopping dollars is spent out of the area, in places such as Roseville and Sacramento.
Labeled "Be Local: Buy Locally. Think Nevada County First," the effort is meant to build awareness of the benefits of local shopping.
Greg does not mention the dollars spend on Internet shopping, which is becoming easier and easier as more and more comparative shopping sites go online. With the new phones like the iPhone and other smart phones with internet access, one can standing at a store counter and do some comparative shopping, Buyer ahve the option, buy at the store price, or at the Internet price.
With the new Google phone out in a couple of weeks, the comparative shopping function will be built in. One will be able to Google a product, find the store with the best price and get a map to the store all on their Google phone. If two stores have the product with a price spread, one can chose the cheapest, or the closest, depending on the driving distance.
With million of people these days start their shopping trips on the Internet to collect comparative price information before hitting the stores, or doing in online by smart phone in the store, it seem to me that Western Nevada County needs a comparative shopping web page. A place where we can all go and put in the name of the product we want and a comparative shopping page comes up, with a list of the local stores that carry the product and the prices they charge. We could all save time by checking to see if the product was local before ordering off the Internet, or heading down the hill to Roseville or Marysville.
Having a local comparative shopping site would help protect the environment, we could quickly locate the product we want and not have to go from store-to-store to check availability, and compare prices. All that comparative shopping costs time, fuel, and pollutes the air.
Ordering off the Internet can save you money, but it has a time cost, you have to wait for the delivery truck to arrive. Driving to Rosveville has a time and energy cost, you have to drive down the hill and pay for the gas. Where as shopping local you can get same day service at lower cost, less fuel and less time shopping. And, with a local comparative web site you can find the best local price. Shopping could not be easier, and we would all be saving the air.
So, who is going to step up and create this comparative shopping tool? The ERC? The Chambers? The Down Town Associations? All, working together, maybe with an air quality grant from the Federal Government. We have some local experts in the community that could advise an ad-hoc group interested in creating a local comparative shopping network. Or, maybe we should consider a commercial model. Should it be The Union? The Penny Saver? A Start Up? What do you think?
