Survey results to help assist the success of the local business community

The findings will help support business growth moving forward, and promote a more competitive business environment.

Medicine Hat & District Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Lisa Kowlchuck says there was really good engagement by the business community with 476 surveys.

The survey was a partnership with Southeast Alberta.

Kowalchuck says one of the projects that emerged from the survey was the #LocalFirstYXH initiative.

She says it’s now underway with a local brand campaign.

Kowalchuck encourages businesses to use #LocalFirstYXH in their advertising.

“Beyond just shopping local. And shopping local is critically important. But why it’s important, and why we need to support local first because these are the businesses that support our local charities, that volunteer their time, that donate and support our local sports teams and clubs. And factoring in the economic multiplier of shopping locally and what that does to our local community.”

Meantime, the shopHERE program in the city is also getting businesses online with a digital presence.

There are over 70 businesses signed up for shopHERE in Medicine Hat.

Kowalchuck says the BREWD survey also found eight themes emerge.

1. Encouraging business development & local shopping by promoting the region and our businesses.

2. Helping facilitate business expansion and diversification by improving access to capital land, building incentives.

3. Helping to facilitate expected regional business growth by improving regulatory conditions and infrastructure as well as downtown development and maintenance.

4. Planning for the impacts of ongoing and upcoming technological innovation within regional businesses.

Kowalchuck says the other four themes were on the workforce development side, “Looking to improve labour force availability, improving the attraction of labour, looking at how we retain our labour force, and developing our labour force.”

The first four themes are still pertinent in the context of COVID Kowalchuck said, “Particularly encouraging business development and local shopping and the need for technological advancement. All of those have been critically important in the context of COVID and how businesses have had to adapt and adjust and how we promote our local businesses.”

The full BREWD report is available by visiting this link.

Kowalchucks says the chamber will be reaching back out to the business community over the next four months to get a bit more data so that the chamber can inform their strategies moving forward and provide that data to partner organizations.

by Chantal Wagner

Survey results to help assist the success of the local business community

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