Once upon a time, before the internet was how we bought everything, the terror of the small business world was the big box stores. Now, it is Amazon. The small businesses have difficulty competing with both for the same reason: economies of scale. In other words, because the logistical costs grow slower the sales do--it costs less to ship 50 boxes at once than 1 box 50 times--the massive scale of Amazon allows it to spread out the logistical costs, across more products, thus leading to a smaller price for the customer per unit. A book at Barnes and Noble has to pay for its own shipping, the warehouse staff, the lights in the building, rent for both the sales building and the warehouse, and so on. The same book at Amazon doesn't need to pay for a building it can be displayed and sold in (generally--excepting Amazon's bookstores). Big Box stores cannot compete with Amazon, because they are both playing the same game, by the same rules, and Amazon has a massive advantage in virtue of its scale.
None of that is news, of course. Neither is it news that small businesses have to play a different game if they want to win. Small businesses have to rely on people who value community. This is the key value for advertising in recent years, as evidenced by how much is sold by appealing to connection, community, family, neighborhood, and other similar notions (The most obvious cases of this that I have noticed are Weber and Coca-Cola, but I live under a rock as far as advertisements go). Small businesses rely on these values by inherently embodying them: they are communal entities. They invest in their communities, know customers by name, and have to care about customer retention.
Let me say a little bit more about how huge community is as an advertising value. What I mean by an advertising value is a value which a product is associated with in advertising to make people want the product because it is associated with the value. When I was growing up and learning to read advertisements so as to be resistant to them, the main advertising values were sex, money, and excitement, the last mostly when watching shows for younger people, the former when watching, say, the news. Now, however, community is bigger than both, although money still shows up now and then. Community does most of what sex used to, but draws a wider audience. Perhaps this observation is subject to a selection effect, but notice that social media draws on this same value, and that our lack of connection is perhaps the lament expressed most loudly and adamantly by the media.
So, you are being sold to via your need for connection. You are not necessarily being sold anything which will satisfy that need, however. Buying a Weber won't make nice big friendly lawn parties happen, and buying a Coke won't help you connect with strangers. Facebook is not actually there to help you connect with friends. Even small businesses only enable connection because that is how they survive. What should we do? Should we avoid all of these things because they will not satisfy our need for connection? In some cases, that may be appropriate. Certainly, don't buy a Coke because you are lonely (granted, no one is actually thinking this, but they may be buying because of it).
There is another option, however. Some of these products actually can serve connection. Social media is a tool that, when used carefully, can enable communication. Small local businesses, when done well, provide the feeling of community by providing genuine community, welcoming and connecting people. It is not hard to imagine that, if I frequented a bookstore long enough, and there was anyone else buying similar books, the salesperson might notice and connect us. Spend enough time around people, and permit it, and all sorts of discussions can take place.
Of course, the business is still a business. The clerk is not being paid to be a friend, but to be friendly. It is still not genuine connection because I meet them as a customer, and they meet me as a salesperson. Neither of us meets the other as a person. The possibility of such a business serving to enable connection between the customers is, then, an important possibility. This shifts the small business into territory competing, albeit indirectly, with social media, in that their product becomes, in part, people. Then the question becomes how to make money by connecting people, but that might be as simple to solve as relying on connection to bring people in, and then expecting that most people, once in, will buy something.
The other challenge is how to ensure that the, presumably diverse, customer base genuinely connects. We are not merely trying to sate the need, but satisfy it. We want create genuine connection, not merely a marketable semblance of it. The challenge is to bridge gaps between people with very different views, who tend to speak in very different idioms, and who the media portrays as implacable enemies. Of course, they are not implacable enemies, and most at least think that they are exceptions to the rule that says the two sides do not understand each other. Part of the challenge, then, is to get people to recognize that they do not understand each other, that they nevertheless would benefit from the hard work of doing so, and that they cannot connect without doing so. The challenge here is to ensure that views are heard whether they are thought of as legitimate or not, and in their peculiar deviations from their popular portrayals. Part of this is managing to keep people from sticking each other in boxes, assuming that, because they "know what liberals/conservatives think" they also know what this liberal/conservative thinks.
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