While many of us do our best to ensure that
a majority of our purchases are local, ethical and environmental, ultimately,
finances and necessity (read convenience) overtakes our cynicism and we end up
buying our organic chickpeas from a major supermarket chain.
If we rewind a few decades to the 1950s and
beyond, consumers had little or no choice when it came to consumable items; the
store keeper chose the brand and allocated a price for our purchases. This
relationship between the consumer and store keeper all changed when somewhere
in the 60s when the supermarket was introduced and consumers we permitted to
browse the isles for products. Consumers could themselves select what they
wanted, a turning point in the control of consumer choice.
These abundant choices continued through to
the present day where we no longer use a basket to carry our groceries, we need
a tank sized trolley to cart our purchases to our self-serve checkout. We have
endless choices for any item that consumes our attention and we well and truly
have control of our choices. Or do we?
Our supermarket roller coaster ride has
been spent for many of us with our eyes wide shut. While some may have been
quietly hoping for the dynamic range of choices to be minimised (do we really
need an entire isle dedicated to soft drink?), for some of us we are now
becoming cognisant to the fact that we really have not been in control of our
choices for some time now.
Like the evil sister that quietly studies
and entices our boyfriend until she finally covets his affections right under our
naive nose, supermarkets have been studying our purchases (loyalty cards), understanding
our preferences (stocking organic chickpeas) and providing us with incentives
to spend more (how many times have I spent $28 on groceries and found myself
disappointed that I didn’t spend enough to get my fuel voucher?).
How could we not have seen this coming?
Obviously there have been some big monopoly decisions that have occurred in
order to manipulate the general course of events, but I suppose it really
started when some of the big guys realised that the idea of a supermarket or no
label brand was attractive to the consumer. I remember in the 80s when the
supermarket brands were originally shelved near the ‘Homebrand’ and ‘Black
& Gold’ budget brands, until that is, they did their research and realised
that there was more money to be had in eliminating competitors’ brands from the
shelves and stocking their own products.
For me, this really all came to crisis
point when I realised that the organic chickpeas that I had been unashamedly
purchasing from a major supermarket chain was no longer available. I tracked
down my cherished brand of organic chickpeas at a local independent grocer,
only to find that their price was more than double what I had been purchasing
them for. I also realised that a huge majority of natural and organic ‘healthy
alternatives’ that you could previously purchase in supermarkets have been replaced
with identical supermarket products. Granted, these products may well come from
the same farms and be manufactured in the same factories and simply packaged
differently, who really benefits here?
Being both a consumer and a small business
owner myself this really made me realise that some of my purchases as a
consumer were not in line with my beliefs as a small business owner. As we grow
and learn, each of us begins to understand the value of how even our smallest
purchases influence our global economy. Ultimately it is up to us as consumers
to support small independent businesses, to allow ourselves to sustain and
relinquish control of our choices and enable small businesses to remain as an
integral part of our economy. As I learn to make more conscious and aware
choices with buying natural, organic and local products from independent small
business I hope this will somehow influence others to do the same.
Choose
natural, choose organic, choose local.