Evaluate the potential impact on individuals, communities and cultures of the changing retail structure of clone towns.

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Evaluate the potential impact on individuals, communities and cultures of the changing retail structure of clone towns.

Recently, the large number of chain stores around the UK has led to the creation of many “clone towns”: towns similar in appearance and atmosphere with the same shops as the rest of the country filling their high street. Naturally this shift in environments as places begin to lose their individuality and heritage affects everybody and has a great impact on individuals, communities and cultures.

One benefit of these “clone towns” is that the increase in supermarket chains leads to consumers being able to choose from a wider selection of goods as they tend to stock more products than smaller, local shops which cannot afford to buy very large quantities of things. The fact that the supermarkets buy in bulk also means products are cheaper as they benefit from economies of scale. It is easy to say that one should support local, individual retailers, however if they cannot price competitively and offer all of the goods we need it’s natural for people to go to larger chain stores which meet their needs.

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Communities also benefit from increased employment opportunities provided by larger retail outlets which can afford to hire larger volumes of staff and provide additional employee benefits. For example, a large supermarket like Morrisons can afford to put more money into training their staff and can offer them benefits such as staff discounts which a smaller store may not be able to fund.

In rural areas there’s also the added bonus that supermarkets (or their smaller, express stores) can provide goods which they may otherwise be unable to buy without having to travel. For example, very small villages are less likely ...

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This is a well written essay evaluating the positives and negatives of clone towns. To improve this essay should include more specific examples, and possibly some images, to demonstrate the points being made. 4 stars