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December 15, 2014 Why It Can Be Smart to Locate Your Little Business Next to a Giant One Independent-bookshop patrons who were told that the store's main competition was billion-dollar corporations were 34% more likely to make purchases than those who were told that the main competition was other locally owned bookstores, according to a team led by Neeru Paharia of Georgetown University. This and other experiments demonstrate that consumers increase their preference for small brands when large and small brands are framed as competing against each other. The effect diminishes as the competitors become more physically distant, the researchers say. SOURCE: Positioning Brands Against Large Competitors to Increase Sales

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