Mrs Brown - Shopkeeper

( Mrs Brown, aged 28, is a Glasgow shopkeeper. She owns a small businesses and she is trying to deal
with the competition posed by large-scale business enterprises. )

Business is going steadily downhill and I can't seem to do anything about it.  Big businesses are driving us out.

The price competition has become very intense. The supermarket next door sells its products at extremely low prices. If I were to quote my products at the same prices I would have a very thin margin of profit. In fact in most cases I would not even be able to meet the manufacturing costs. That means running steady losses with the only remaining option of moving out of the business.

In fact, the low manufacturing costs of big businesses are closely linked to their scale of manufacture. These enterprises can control the economies of scale that small, individually owned enterprises cannot have access to. That is one area where we cannot compete since our scale of manufacture is comparatively much smaller.

So that leaves competing on the quality front. But there too the prospects are not very promising. The days of high quality, niche products are gone. The customer wants a fairly priced products of standard quality. As long as the quality meets a certain minimum level, the only factor to attract the customer is a competitive price. The days of brand loyalty are gone. It is all about price competition and cost cutting.

The opportunities for cost cutting in my business are more or less exhausted. The low prices coupled with the quality and variety that big businesses offer leave little or no room for small-scale enterprises. I can only see the market for my products retreating in the future.