Oct 11 2009

Can you encourage shops by buying their products?

Published by Dougal at 5:58 pm under Life

If there’s a product you buy regularly — like tea or washing powder or chocolate biscuits — which isn’t always available locally, you might be inclined to buy it when it’s there, to encourage the shop to stock the item you want.

I saw the brand of tea we like in the big Co-op at the Foot of the Walk the other day, so I bought two boxes instead of just one. Then I realised, if we have twice as much tea in the house, I’ll be buying it half as often. The money we spend on tea in a given year won’t change. So maybe there’s nothing I can actually do to implicitly encourage the Co-op to stock our preferred tea. Unless we drink twice as much tea as before.

2 responses so far

2 Responses to “Can you encourage shops by buying their products?”

  1. Emilyon 12 Oct 2009 at 2:49 pm

    I buy the Guardian from the little Spar near us every time I see that they have a copy (even if I’ve already bought one elsewhere that day) in the hope that they will start getting more in. It hasn’t bloody worked.

  2. Kenon 12 Oct 2009 at 6:42 pm

    Well, they actively stop stocking everything that I like at the Coop in Dunbar. Clearly, I have a negative effect on their stock policies. Bah!