Comment: on getting people to buy "local" goods and services

Let's go back to a recent lens I provided on someone's comment talk about 'how to build communities." The notion I raised is that communities exist as a result of economic pressures, and the construction of fundamentally sustainable communities begins with a review of the economic pressures faced by each potential member of the constructed community. Goodwill is born of economic pressures, it doesn't just pop out of the good books.

The phenomena described by Iqbal Ameer is not new. Malaysians have been complaining about Malaysians lacking support for Malaysian things since time immemorial (I admit I'm not very old). Just yesterday, I think, someone on Twitter was asking how individual citizens can help to prop up the exchange rate of Malaysia's currency - and I'm like, dude, there's only one way to do that... you buy locally produced goods and services, and if you're a producer you avoid selling them domestically. This may seem like a bit of a digression because artists may be less sentimental about money than they are about community, and no one's saying that we should go to more local artists' concerts in an effort to prop up the Ringgit.

But it's not a digression, because we're talking about the exact same underlier. Whether a scrooge gets sentimental about their Ringgit investments, or whether a Malaysian consumer gets sentimental about local dingbat cartoon characters, the underlier is the common identity shared by the scrooge, the art consumer, the Ringgit, the Upin and the Ipin... the national identity, as Malaysian.

Now as we come back to the economic pressures faced by consumers, we find that many consumers don't identity with other Malaysians. Read that again. It's literally a case of Malaysian#1 and Malaysian#2 don't think each other are actually on the same team. Now why is that the case?

We're left with no option but to review a fundamental component of Malaysia's social psychology: xenophobia is grounded in the Constitution (yes, the national constitution), and furthermore it has been encouraged for decades by the Executive branch of government. Xenophobia is omnipresent in our federal propaganda, to date. There's no shorter way to phrase it. Regardless of superficial talk about national unity, Malaysians go to their back-channels and say, "well we tried, but after all, the other blokes are not like us."

So back to your question about petty traders: read, local brands, bands, and businesses. The only way to market something as being BETTER because it is LOCAL (or domestic) is to focus on value propositions that emphasise a common threat vis a vis a failure to support the local thing (or a common incentive vis a vis supporting the local thing).

Going back to the little example of the scrooge, the art consumer, the Ringgit, and the cartoon characters ("art"). The narrative of a brand that is selling local cartoons needs to demonstrate to a scrooge why his Ringgit will depreciate if he doesn't buy local cartoons... and the narrative of a brand that is selling Ringgit investments needs to demonstrate to art consumers why Ringgit appreciation is beneficial to the development of local art.

This may seem like an obvious pattern, but it is actually ignored by marketers everywhere. Oh well. :P