Our retailers and businesses need locals to buy in this Christmas Did you know that the Irish online shopping market last year was worth over €7 billion? Unfortunately we have the highest rate of cross border online shopping in western Europe with over two thirds of Irish consumers spend going overseas. This money is vacuumed out of our economy and in to other countries such as the UK, USA and China. The more we buy overseas, we lose what’s known as the “local multiplier effect”. This general rule of thumb means that for every €100 a person spends locally, €500 recirculates into the local economy. Local spending can increase by up to that much because the money often stays within the local economy. It is spent on locally-sourced goods and services and employs people in the area, who will, in turn, spend much of their wages locally also. While there was a definite trend of Irish shoppers increasing their spend online the past decade, COVID-19 accelerated things dramatically. According to a KPMG report last year, 68% of Irish consumers do more online shopping now
than before the pandemic. To their credit, and with the support of Government initiatives such as the Local Enterprise Office Trading Online Voucher, many local businesses managed to get online over the past few years and are now able to compete for some of that online spend. However, the challenge for many small local businesses is they do not have the financial or technical resources nor the economy of scale to compete with international retail giants such as Amazon, SHEIN or IKEA, which means they need our local support. If we want to keep our town vibrant with great local independent retailers, our family members and friends employed and our local sports clubs funded through local business sponsorship, we should all try and keep some of our Christmas spend in the local economy. We hope you enjoy our Shop Local Christmas Feature and see what Killarney retailers and businesses are up to this year.