If I make a CC payment of 1p who gets the 1p?

Maestro.

Scarpacci wrote: »

Free for whom? There's nothing free about being told you can not have a supermarket in this town, you must use independent butchers, bakers and candle stick makers whether you like it or not. If a Tesco Extra moves into a village, it will only survive if the people of the village choose to shop there.

Rightly, we tend to prioritise freedom of choice for the consumer. We might not be building moats around small businesses to protect them, but they and the supermarkets are free to compete with each other. If a small village can't support a supermarket + independent, it's unlikely to be a bastion of free enterprise. One butcher who competes with nobody else and a baker who competes with nobody else have little incentive to be reasonably priced. At least with a supermarket there's some national competition on pricing.

The supermarket sector is very competitive in and of itself. You only have to read of the woes of Tesco, ASDA, Morrisons and, to a lesser extent, Sainsbury's at the hands of Waitrose, M&S, Lidl and Aldi to see that. The people have essentially spoken when it comes to supermarkets or independent stores. Whatever the people claim about preferring them, they wouldn't be disappearing if people used them. Many towns and cities can and do support supermarkets and independents. I can't ultimately see anything wrong with independents disappearing in places where people choose to switch completely to supermarkets.

When I say free I mean free from stifling competition. If the high street has a butcher, fishmonger, tool shop and a gift shop, and then a supermarket comes, it could well wipe out all of those independents.

I use the supermarket often myself, so I suppose that makes me a hypocrit, but that doesn't change what I think about how they stifle smaller business. I'd just struggle to use a lot of the independents here because of my hours of work, parking etc. supermarkets have the money and power to put themselves at the convenience of people like me... How convenient

If the supermarket didn't exist then the independents would be forced to open later, and perhaps to do things like accept card payments. And I'd use them in a heartbeat. I can't deny the usefulness of supermarkets, but I still think they're a negative influence on independent retailers, and if they just !!!!!!ed off I think many tesco'd town centres and village streets would flourish as they did pre- supermarket age. And the knock on effect, such as people being more sociable and being more self sufficient (home baking etc) would likely return too.

dzug1

Maestro. wrote: »

If the supermarket didn't exist then the independents would be forced to open later, and perhaps to do things like accept card payments. .

Not sure that follows. They would only open later if their customers made it worthwhile for them to do so - likewise with accepting cards.


Perhaps there would be enough customers for them to do that, perhaps not. Problem is they would be attracting custom from a relatively small area therefore a relatively small number. A supermarket has a much wider catchment area than a local shop


To take an example - a local shop near me used to stay open until 7pm. But after 5.30 there might well be only 3 or 4 customers until closing time spending at most a couple of £ each. They now close at 5.30


Or are you saying they should work longer hours for less money? Seems to be the way the market is - currently - heading

lisyloo

I use the supermarket often myself, so I suppose that makes me a hypocrit

You sound like me and most people also.
Your modern lifestyle (e.g. work hours) means you prefer the supermarket but you have some romantic notion of us all having time and space (parking) to wander around the village and do home baking. Perhaps even having one partner staying at home.

We would all claim we don't have a choice - "it's my work hours you see", but actually you do have a choice.
When push comes to shove most of us don't actually value the baker/butchers enough to inconvenience ourselves timewise and financially.

We have a half-way house near us which is a large farm shop.
It now does actually now have enough variety to make it worth going there.
It has a small garden center, cafe and sells logs, Xmas trees, dishwasher salt etc. so I think the key is in offering the variety to make it worthwhile and being big enough.

I don't think you can expect there to be this romantic notion of life if you aren't going to FULLY support it. This means the inconvenience of time, extra cost, inconvenient transport, have to go to lots of different shops etc.
I think people remember the good bits but don't remember the inconvenience.

It's really nice to be able to get tights, hair colour, ibuprofen etc. even sheets and irons at the supermarket and not have to go to dozens of place.

pmartin86

I know this thread is off topic, but the one thing that continuously bugs me about "supermarket v high street" debat that constantly irritates me is that supermarkts started as a one off shop, by being the best, theive grown into what they are, why would anyone want to stifle and punish that? its hardly an incetive for Joe butcher to work hard to expand his store, maybe open another store and put in x hours every week if by growing hes going to eventualy be demonised too...

bigadaj

lisyloo wrote: »

You sound like me and most people also.
Your modern lifestyle (e.g. work hours) means you prefer the supermarket but you have some romantic notion of us all having time and space (parking) to wander around the village and do home baking. Perhaps even having one partner staying at home.

We would all claim we don't have a choice - "it's my work hours you see", but actually you do have a choice.
When push comes to shove most of us don't actually value the baker/butchers enough to inconvenience ourselves timewise and financially.

We have a half-way house near us which is a large farm shop.
It now does actually now have enough variety to make it worth going there.
It has a small garden center, cafe and sells logs, Xmas trees, dishwasher salt etc. so I think the key is in offering the variety to make it worthwhile and being big enough.

I don't think you can expect there to be this romantic notion of life if you aren't going to FULLY support it. This means the inconvenience of time, extra cost, inconvenient transport, have to go to lots of different shops etc.
I think people remember the good bits but don't remember the inconvenience.

It's really nice to be able to get tights, hair colour, ibuprofen etc. even sheets and irons at the supermarket and not have to go to dozens of place.

I'd agree with most of that apart from the time aspect. Many people work far less in terms of time and effort than their parents and grandparents did, the idea of a busy modern lifestyle, and the whole hardworking families thing, is a fallacy.

iAMaLONDONER

pmartin86 wrote: »

I know this thread is off topic, but the one thing that continuously bugs me about "supermarket v high street" debat that constantly irritates me is that supermarkts started as a one off shop, by being the best, theive grown into what they are, why would anyone want to stifle and punish that? its hardly an incetive for Joe butcher to work hard to expand his store, maybe open another store and put in x hours every week if by growing hes going to eventualy be demonised too...

Though the irony is that it would be much harder for a Tesco or Sainsbury's to go from a single shop to a household name in today's society with as little as 7 players having over 70% of market share..