In recent years, many small local shops have closed because customers travel to large shopping centres

or malls to do their shopping. Is this a positive or a negative development?

Supermarket or rather shopping at malls is a rising shopping trend among consumers contemporarily.
Consumers prefer shopping in these stores, due to number of reasons, even though they are located at
the city centers or far away from the city or from where they resides. Mainly, the luxurious setup, the
the selection of goods range, easy payment options such as credit cards, sales promotions or deals,
parking facilities etc. Top of everything, their is a consumer perception that the quality of the products
available at these stores are high and fresh.

However, department stores, hyper markets, supermarkets; all these massive shops have created a very
intense competition to our local mom and pop stores. The friendly, next door shops are negatively
impacted economically. Some shops even faced bankruptcy and other to lose their revenue significantly.
This has affected the lives and the families of these shop owners. The most significant fact is that there
is a class of people who depends on these shops. The friendly neighborhood shops provide their goods
on a credit basis for the community.

There is no specific law to regulate this or an action that the government could take or impose to control
this. This is the trend of consumer behavior, it changes eventually with the social and technological
implications. Now even this is changing to E-Commerce platforms on the internet with the new
innovations led by companies such as Amazon, Alibaba, Wallmart, Tesco etc. Everything is a
development, but this has negative consequences to some whilst other benefit. But whatever the case it
is the market for local shops will exist, therefore if those shops want to survive in the local market they
might want to come up with a differentiated strategy to cater their products.