When is cheap cheap enough? What else do you buy when you let price determine your decisions? The Corvallis Independent Business Alliance recognizes that cost is very important in making buying decisions. But our members have also worked hard to satisfy their customers’ needs and have been in business long enough to recognize that it is usually not the only determining factor in deciding which business to patronize.

It is often a cumulative result made up of many individual experiences and personal values.

Trust, previous experience, familiarity with the staff and owner, real value, and desire to support the business all play a major role in the final decision. Our concern is that price and perceived convenience are pushing aside the other, more “people friendly” values and that someday soon we will find ourselves living in a community in which we are uncomfortable.

Once the total shopping experience, interaction with friends and the personal satisfaction of mutual support are minimized, it is not long before community quality of life is also diminished. Warehouse-type stores encourage impulse and often unnecessary purchases, they require a faster pace and high turnover, and they often depend on unrealistic expectations. The local business, by contrast, builds on customer satisfaction, owner knowledge and passion and relevance to the community.

CIBA has chosen to take a positive, education-based approach to empower consumers to make their own informed decisions. We are not necessarily against national retailers. Rather, we are for locally owned businesses. We encourage you to examine your thoughts as you wander the aisles of the giant warehouse stores: What attracts you to an item, what influences your decision to buy or not buy it, how genuine do you feel the service offered is, etc.? Do you really need everything you buy? Now do the same thing when you visit your favorite local store.

Ask yourself a couple of basic questions. How cheap is cheap enough? How fast is fast enough? How reliable is reliable enough? And how convenient is convenient enough? Now consider what else you bought at the warehouse store, how long it took you to find it, how comfortable the shopping experience was, and how your purchase contributed to the values you want your community to sustain.

A community is composed of individuals, and the values of the community are determined by the individual choices of its members. An independent business usually doesn’t succeed or fail because of a couple of great or poor seasons. It is more often the cumulative effect of people buying “just a couple of items” at a “great deal” at some national chain store.

It may not seem significant at the time, but many studies have shown the dramatic effect on a business’s bottom line of many customers buying just that one item at a small savings elsewhere. As owners, we know that everyone who patronizes our business makes a purposeful decision to support us. We are aware that we can never take this support for granted and must strive every day to deserve it. That is why CIBA firmly believes that locally owned businesses are so critical to the long-term vitality of our community.