Buying a gift from a local business just feels good. You’re not only finding, say, the perfect holiday gift, you’re also investing in your community. It helps that the people who work in local shops tend to be knowledgeable and genuinely excited to help you find just the right thing.

But it’s not just that small businesses attract particularly helpful people. It’s that the people who work for these businesses care enough about what they sell to seek out additional knowledge and experience that will make them even more of an expert on what they sell.

We analyzed data from over 4,000 local and national retailers on Experticity and found that local businesses have some of the most engaged and informed employees when it comes to product and brand knowledge. For instance, local sporting goods retailers are 4 times more likely to have at least 90% of employees participating in online educational content about brands they sell than national sporting goods retailers. And local outdoor retailers are 3 times more likely to have at least 90% of employees doing the same. Read on for the full study results.

More Study Details on Local Sporting Goods Retailers
We analyzed retailers in the Experticity community from the biking, running, nutrition, fitness and training categories. That includes 2,314 U.S. retailers with 139,408 employees/members, and assumes retailers with 3 or fewer locations as local businesses. The results show the following about local sporting goods retailers:

• They’re 4x more likely to have at least 90% employee participation
• Nearly 80% of their employees have participated, and at a higher rate than all other retailer sub-groups on Experticity by location count
• They account for 92% of all retailers with full member participation (i.e., where every member/employee has taken at least one online education module on Experticity)

More Study Details on Local Outdoor Retailers
We also analyzed retailers in the Experticity community from the camping, climbing, fishing, hiking, hunting, paddle sports, skiing and snowboard categories. That includes 2,020 U.S. retailers with over 154,551 employees/members, and assumes retailers with 3 or fewer locations as local businesses. The results show the following about local outdoor retailers:

• They’re 3x more likely to have at least 90% employee participation
• Over 80% of their employees have participated, and at a higher rate than all other retailer sub-groups on Experticity by location count
• They account for 97% of all retailers with full member participation (i.e., where every member/employee has taken at least one online education module on Experticity)

This means that at the end of the day, it’s not only customers that should feel good about shopping local. Small business owners themselves can rest assured that their employees know the products they sell well and are helping customers make smart decisions about what to buy.