Local purchasing is a preference to buy locally produced goods and services over those produced more distantly. It is very often abbreviated as a positive goal 'buy local' to parallel the phrase think globally, act locally.

On the national level, the equivalent of local purchasing is import substitution, the deliberate industrial policy or agricultural policy of replacing goods or services produced on the far side of a national border with those produced on the near side, i.e. in the same country or trade bloc.

Historically, there have been so many incentives to buy locally that no one had to make any kind of point to do so, but with current market conditions, it is often cheaper to buy distantly produced goods, despite the added costs in terms of packaging, transport, inspection, retail facilities, etc.. As such, one must now often take explicit action if one wants to purchase locally produced goods.

Advocates often suggest local purchasing as a form of moral purchasing. Local purchasing is often claimed to be better for the Earth and better for local working conditions.
The first potential moral benefit is environmental: Bringing goods from afar generally requires using more energy than transporting goods locally, and some environmental advocates (for instance, Amory Lovins) see this as a serious environmental threat. Of course, locally produced goods are not always more energy-efficient; sometimes local agriculture or manufacturing may rely on energy-inefficient machinery.

More and more of us then decide to do shopping at super-discount department stores like Wal-Mart. Whatever their virtues, however, these stores systematically suck money out of town and put traditional small retailers out of business.

List of local businesses

Credits:
http://www.heliosnetwork.org/Why_Buy_Local.pdf
Local purchasing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia