I don't have any choice but to go out of my hood for most of the stuff I want/need, I try as hard as I can to buy local, but for some stuff I cannot. Food etc I buy as much local as I can, but often the variety and quality of the local stuff is not very good, so I don't buy it.
Being in retail, I do understand what Bruce is saying, and we try very hard to get stuff in that the customer wants, VERY hard, but I also know the vast majority of the Mom & Pop shops around here have been here forever and they don't want to change with the times, they will not bring in new products and will not shift with the shift in local populations. Case in point, there were two local butcher shops that sold retail, they both sold only the cut meat, at that time (20 years ago) the majority of their customers were families, this area still had a lot of families living here, then the road got widened and we lost literally thousands of families up and down our major road, they sold the land to the city and had to buy out side of our area, so they are gone, the new buildings that were built in the area are mostly for one person, or a couple, not for families, they make more money as most young people are not settled and they move every couple of years, and the landlords make more money on them breaking their lease than on then completing the lease, just the way things are. For the butcher shop this meant that there were a LOT fewer families buying uncooked meat, but a bunch of younger single people who wanted to buy a prepared meal, a "Bento". The one shop changed their business, did a minor renovation and added the sinks, cookers etc to make these bentos, they do a lot of lunch business with the local office workers and they stay open later and do a ton of business with single people who live in the area on the way home from work. The second butcher shop did not evolve, they were the longer established business and they were much larger and had been much more successful, they lasted about 5 or 6 years and they are now gone.
The lesson for me is that you have to keep on adapting to the market, you cannot rest on your laurels, many small local businesses do not get this and they go out of business because they have not kept up.
Sorry to ramble on