Finns want a local store

A local store survey commissioned by the Siwa retail chain and conducted by TNS Gallup indicates that more than half of all Finns consider the decreasing number and increasing size of stores either bad or very bad. While there were 20,000 grocery stores in Finland in the 1960s, there are fewer than 4,000 today.

People also want stores to be closer to their home than they are today. The survey shows that Finns consider a distance of 1.5 km to the store reasonable. The distance to the closest local store today is on average 2.3 km.

The survey also reveals that it takes (people) 81 minutes on average to complete a shopping trip to a hypermarket. The trip to a local store only takes 34 minutes on average. Most people drive to do their shopping, but many only do this because they have no alternative. In the Helsinki metropolitan area, where stores are more plentiful, up to 50% of respondents said they usually do their shopping on foot or by bike.

Source: TNS Gallup 2007