I feel passionately about supporting individual, independent shops.
I live in a very small town on the Devon/Cornwall border and try to support our little shops as much as possible, I do realise that things are very often more expensive because the retailers can't even buy in the stuff at the price the big boys sell it at, but sometimes it's worth paying a little bit extra for the personal service that you receive and very often you can get a discount as "goodwill"
In the case of our butcher, he's nearly always cheaper than the supermarket (we've only got Waitrose and they're so expensive) the meat is so much better, he can trace the provenance of every animal that he sells and knows that it's been humanely raised and slaughtered.
Sadly, our local electricians where I've always bought all my electrical appliances since we got married 33 years ago, as did my parents before me, has just shut up shop because they just couldn't compete. I've had the most amazing service from them over the years that you'd never get from the big retailers.
