In recent years many local shops have closed because customers travel to large shopping centers to do their shopping. Is it a positive or negative development?

In the past years, individuals shifted their location of shopping from small retail stores to shopping centres, resulting in the shutdown of many local shops. In my opinion,

this

trend is affecting negatively the economy in various ways.

To begin

with, small shops closing down have a big influence on the unemployment rates of a country.

In other words

, when retail stores are unable to compete with big malls for not having the enough resources, they are obliged to dismiss all their employees.

As a result

, job opportunities are harder to find, and competition is the work field is higher, especially for individuals who are above years old.

For example

, newly graduates have it better chance to find a new job vacancy because companies prefer to have youth in their teams due to their adaptability skills, leaving the individuals within the age range above 40 unemployed.

Secondly

, large centres can control the market price wise when there is no more competition. To put it differently, it is commonly known that owning a mall or a shop within a centre can lead to high expenses.

Consequently

, when competition gets lower large shops increases the prices of their goods in order to start gaining profits.

For instance

, business researchers showed that a very common strategy new business use is to cut their profits to Zero if necessary to attract new customers where they wait for their competitors to close to start increasing the prices gradually. In conclusion, large centres taking over the market, forcing retailers to close their businesses affect the economy in both increases of prices and unemployment rates.