IELTS essay about supermarkets and small shops

IELTS essay topic

In many countries, supermarkets have caused small shops to close down. Is this having more advantages or more disadvantages?

Sample response

The supermarket boom has forced many small vendors to shut shops. This is definitely disadvantageous to them. On the flip side, supermarkets have helped local and national economies in several ways. Let me elaborate on this.

Supermarkets promote economic growth. They employ lots of people and job creation certainly helps the local economy. Since supermarkets attract a large number of consumers, the area surrounding them also tends to develop owing to increased consumer activity. It is not uncommon for supermarkets to bring about the infrastructural development of the area surrounding them. This actually benefits other businesses operating in the immediate neighborhood. In fact, even the prices of residential properties go up if there is a supermarket or a shopping mall in their vicinity. These are all examples of the positive impact of supermarkets.

Supermarkets have made shopping easier and hassle-free. When a customer can buy all that they need from one shop, they save time and money. They don’t have to go from shop to shop looking for that tin of canned fish or bottle of milk. It is this convenience that makes supermarkets quite popular with customers.

On the flip side, supermarkets have certainly made small shops redundant. Many of them have shut down because they cannot compete with a big store that sells just about everything under one roof. So while supermarkets provide jobs to some people, they also cause the loss of employment for some others.

To conclude, supermarkets have both positive and negative impacts on the society. Generally speaking they are beneficial to the society, but small shop owners certainly bear the brunt of their popularity. Still, in my opinion, supermarkets have more positive impacts than negative impacts on the society.