Should more be done to support small shops?

Well yeah, but in what way?
I have ot admit I go to supermarkets or garages to buy most things but Im sure the surrounding community of a small shop use it on a regular basis.
Ive noticed my local small shop is open at ridiculous times, something like 6-10.Id imagine to catch the morning and late night trade, adn even then customers probably only buy a paper or a bottle of sauce to go with their dinner.

Do you mean help from a community or government?

One does wonder if every small shop should have a speciality like Daniel brown's book or BLUE GUIDES.

if you like it
you can do it...

In order for a small shop to survive, it needs to offer something that the big chains don't. Often, smart shopkeepers provide personal services, such as free gift wrapping. A store that I frequent will gift wrap, and prepare for shipping. You then can ship the item right from the store.

Another thing for a small shop to do is to get to really know their customers. Many customers are fed up with the impersonality of the big stores, and appreciate being known, being called by name, etc.

My aunt used to frequent a certain dress store. She became friendly with the sales people. They knew the kinds of clothes that she liked. When something came in that they thought that she would like, they would put it aside, and give her a call.

Small shop keepers need to learn those things that will keep customers loyal. That is the way that they will "help" themselves stay solvent.

The only way for a small shop to survive the encroachment of the giant chains is to innovate the way they do their business.

This means that they basically stay small forever. They need to cater to their unique niche of customers in a way that the big chains cannot. While the government can provide incentives and give them breaks, in the end its just saying "Yea you guys really arent useful, but we pity you so we'll keep you afloat"

The small shops can only look to themselves for help. In business you will find some of these small businesses come up with a way to stay unique and different from the larger chains. Innovation is the only way. They need to convince people they offer something found nowhere else.

This is also a delicate question of whether we should 'boost' the small shops, do nothing, or impose some rules and caps on the big chains.

Business is business, in the end whether small or big you have to be able to survive in the face of a depression or invasion of competition

It is estimated that by 2015,there will be no corners shops left,leaving only Asda,Somerfield,Sainsbury,Tesco and Waitrose to buy from.

Small shops and the "cornershop" culture they help create do provide the community with benefits that go beyond the commercial profit.

Streets with little shops, and the traffic of people ambling down them, offer more social control than empty streets with an anonymous hypermarket out in the fields - which is advantageous in the fight against crime and social disintegration. Bustling downtown streets with small shops make for that cosy city centre feeling that in turn will attract tourists (and thus benefit the city overall) in a way that a hypermarket with parking space just doesnt. Cornershops make it easier for the elderly to live independently, in their own home rather than stacked away in some costly retirement home. In depressed neighbourhoods, cornershops offer a rare employment opportunity, while the big chain hypermarket outside is likely to recruit its employees from anywhere. Cornershops are probably more likely to go out on a limb and sell some independently-manufactured, local product, when huge supermarket chains are constrained by chain-wide policies.

I think we can come up with some more points like that. All in all, an argument can be made that the preservation of small shop-culture is an interest that goes beyond the economic prospects of the individual shopkeepers - that concerns the welfare of the community, the city or town itself. In that perspective, it can be defended for a city to either or both limit opportunities for the huge hypermarkets to establish themselves within their borders or extend some kind of low-interest credit or the like to local shops.

Good question, btw!

I completely agree with the larger, intangible benefits of small shops.

I usually make an effort to support independent bookstores; I always buy books for Christmas present and then try to actually buy it all at an independent bookstore. "Try" because the deep discounts on new releases at Barnes and Noble and such are awfully tempting.

There was an article recently about how there are fewer really horrible films lately, but also fewer really great ones. One of the points was that the awful ones are often an attempt at grandeur that fell flat, and that studios basically don't allow that anymore. I feel kind of the same way about stores -- the big chains will be your standard blockbuster, better or worse but rarely transcendant, while a cool little local store might have some AMAZING stuff (or just an amazing ambiance, or an amazing depth in one area, or whatever).

Should independent shops have their wholesaler?

THE SUPERMARKETS PLAN TO PUT THEIR PRICES UP WHEN SMALL SHOPS DISAPPEAR IN ABOUT 10 YEARS TIME.

A`TSAR' may be appointed to help small shops.