Is buying local rather than online more righteous?

Should you feel righteous about buying something from a local store rather than from an online company?

A reader we’re calling Samuel wrote that he experienced two related incidents that left him wondering: “Did I do the right thing?"

About eight years ago after he moved into a new house, he was looking for a chandelier for his dining room. He searched online and found one that looked great. “It was a bit of a splurge,” he wrote, so he wanted to see it in person before he committed to it.

Samuel found a store in his area that carried products from the chandelier company. He took a look at it, liked it and decided to buy it.

Samuel would not have known about the lamp had he not found it online, but he likes to support small businesses like his local lighting store. He left the store. About a block away thought "Hmm, I should buy it from them" and turned around, went back to the store and bought the lamp, paying a bit more than he would have paid online.

The second incident involved booking a hotel for a few days in a foreign city. After searching a big travel website, Samuel found a hotel that looked good but decided to take a look at the hotel’s own website. He figured if he booked directly with the hotel they wouldn’t have to pay the travel website a fee. But he wouldn’t have discovered the hotel had he not found it on the “large and impersonal” travel website. Ultimately, Samuel decided to book directly with the hotel even though there was no financial benefit to doing so, not even a free breakfast.

In each case, Samuel wrote that he shunned the online purchase because “it feels right” to do that. But now he wonders if it was any more right to purchase the chandelier or to book the hotel room from independent proprietors than from the online site where he found these things in the first place.

I’m a big fan of supporting small, independently owned businesses. The woman I’d eat bees for and I make a habit of buying at least one book from an independent bookstore in any town we visit. We’re friendly with the owners of small shops and markets where we live and we try to shop from them regularly.

Samuel could have decided that if something went wrong with the chandelier he’d be more likely to get better service from a local proprietor he knew. He also might have decided if something went awry with his hotel booking, it might be easier to deal with the hotel directly rather than the large travel site.

But those weren’t the reasons for Samuel’s choices. He was kind to give the lighting store and the hotel his business. He pointed out that the owner of the lighting store expressed his gratitude when he learned Samuel had first discovered the chandelier online but decided to buy local instead.

But there would have been nothing wrong if Samuel had decided to buy or book online from larger entities if that worked better for him. Ultimately, the right thing was for Samuel to make the purchases that worked best for him, whatever his reasoning was, even if it was to show a little kindness to independent business owners.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.

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