Why do people use chains rather than independent traders?
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2012-04-18 18:11:05 - Graham Ellis
When you can get quality, personal, local service from a business that's based in, and run from, your town, why don't you use it? Perhaps it's because you don't know what's available in your town, or perhaps it's because you've had a bad experience with a local business in the past, and that's put you off using another local business even through the two are totally disconnected. You have a bad experience with (Aldi / Lidl / Sainsburys / Asda / Tesco / Waitrose / Morrisons) and you'll go to one of the others next time. But you have a bad experience with an independent, and somehow that seems to put you off all the independents. This is a real problem for local traders - there's very little that they can do about the shoddy service that a minority of their neighbouring shopkeepers provide!
In the hotel business, there's the same issue too. Come to a town, stay in a hotel, and your whole memory is going to be somewhat coloured by the hotel. You may automatically think that we (as a hotel) would like to come out better on Trip Advisor and other sites than the other hotels around, and to some extent you're right. But when I see results like these when I look at customer views of ourselves (right) and another hotel (left), I worry.
This reflects an appalling customer dissatisfaction with another hotel; it certainly won't do them any good, but more than that it won't do local independent businesses any good. It reflects on us all. It will drive people who are travelling to stay at the nearest Travelodge or Premier Inn, where they will almost inevitably get a good service at a reasonable price for what it is. But nothing special. It's all the sadder because more than half the money spent with a local business is likely to be respent locally, but only about a quarter of the spend with a chain is in the community.
I do have some ideas as to how we can group and take a pride in Melksham - sell the Melksham brand. I know there are other ideas and plans from the Town Traders and other groups too - all invited to the Chamber of Commerce meeting next week (there's strong crossover of people too), when we'll be looking ahead. Come to the Chamber meeting (24th - see [here]) - or watch this space if you're already booked for that evening.
