As many, many years, consumers are buying the products that are generated in the vicinity. If your grandparents or great-grandparents had no choice but to be content with cultivated potatoes nearby, milk dairy corner and clothes sewed dressmaker neighborhood, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, they can access everything is manufactured in virtually any place in the globalized world, they have been launched to consume everything that comes close. They have made beers craft appeared in virtually any medium-sized city, hypermarkets are filled with shelves you decide to regional food and traditions, markets and squares of supplies have seen flocking new generations of customers and fairs and craft markets have emerged in every corner. Consumers also begun to worry about the traditions and have to rescue what they ate and drank their ancestors.

Interest in the local is driven by the boom of the nostalgic. A study by the Journal Consumer Research recently pointed out that nostalgia urging consumers to spend more. The marks of the past are also remembered with more affection and more positive eyes that this (is what could be the reminiscence bump applied to consumption: the elderly remember more and better the past than the present or the immediate past), which makes eating them again makes us feel happier and bring us to a time we thought more golden.

To this adds the current situation: the context is promoting local consumption. On the one hand is the economic crisis, globalization and other challenges that creates and otherwise increasing consumer awareness. Movements consumer principles are increasingly common and among its principles are often those – either for economic or ecological issues – focus on production in proximity. As you remember, and in 2007 the New Oxford American Dictionary chose the word locavore as word of the year. The lovacores are consumers who focus on creating a carbon footprint as small as possible and therefore not only care about the environment but also focus on eating local products.

Moreover, the media, remember the analysis of Euromonitor have created an enabling environment for the local. The foodies do nothing but praise the virtues of many products that were not consumed since the time of our grandparents, new spaces are gourmet ever closer to the old grocery and great chefs have taken to the kitchen proximity and reinvention the local.”The local product is considered with higher nutritional value than imported because it has suffered less slow transit times,” explains Daphne Kasriel-Alexander, Consumer Trends Consultant at Euromonitor. Hence, the feeling that nothing knows how to know before and the idea that re-grown tomatoes adds a few kilometers get improve this undesirable situation.

The effects of the boom is already having local

The idea of the local is also in addition to other streams, such as consumption slow. The movement began mostly associated with food, slow food. Breaking the trend of eating quickly and eating anything, the idea of spending time food and make it a pleasure somehow prevailed. From there it jumped to almost anything: there from slow reading, recovering the pleasure of reading calmly to slow TV , a surprising popular movement in the Nordic countries (where there is even television networks dedicated to it) which basically consists of retransmit things that should be unhurried views, such as a slow train ride and many hours (and which incidentally has ended up being incorporated into the video offering on board British Airways).

Consumers value the intangible benefits of all these things. In fact, they are more than willing to pay more for products and experiences as well. A study led by the University of Arkansas, noted that consumers are willing to pay more for local production, because they consider fresher and healthier. And another study by eMarketer pointed that support small businesses because they feel they are supporting the local industry, besides receiving a treatment much more focused on the consumer.

The effects that local consumption is having are already more tangible. The farmer markets are trending in the United States, but do not go so far. Going to the market is the new cool in consumer practices in Spain and younger consumers (especially Hipster) they are beginning to mingle with the grandparents who never renounced their fishmongers and butchers header in place. Despite the crisis, and we keep talking about Spain, they have not stopped appearing shops selling local products with certain vocation of quality (and have not had to close its doors mass).

And, in recent years, it has become fashionable the idea of urban gardens.Not only municipalities are taking advantage of the ruinous spaces that were previously overgrown for its citizens planted, terraces and balconies are filled with potted cherry tomatoes or elaborate structures that serve to grow different types of plants.

Brands have to follow this game

The millennials believe that brands should support good causes, but they are not alone. Consumers generally believe that brands and companies behind should support good causes. Obviously, for all local trade it is a good cause. And, whether or not, that’s what they expect when they consume. Large companies have really begun to think locally. Firms such as Coca-Cola have adapted to the idiosyncrasies of some markets, as highlighted in FastCompany. And others do nothing but put the emphasis on how close they are despite their status as multinationals. McDonald’s, for example, a few years ago organized tours for their production centers in Spain for consumers to show them that what they consumed came from the field.

Brands, as explained from Euromonitor, are beginning to make more visible the local status of their products. Some are allowing consumers to go back in the production chain to know exactly where it leaves what they are buying, others are bringing manufacturing centers in emerging markets to markets in proximity and others are emphasizing issues of cultural heritage (and considering how well they are doing some fast food chains in the United States, such as the case of Chipotle, the strategy is not working nothing wrong). Even in Dublin, recall from analysis firm, a place that does not have much to do with the history of coffee, the last – and the big trend – are the cafes that have their own coffee roaster.

And although critical voices have appeared (not all home needs to be at best need) the boom is the near and proximate and immediate consumption trend. A marks us they will therefore more to put the batteries to keep up.