When Rochelle Gomez does her Christmas shopping, she'll hit up big chain stores like Kohl's, Ross and Target. But San Antonio will freeze over like the North Pole before Gomez wraps a gift from Wal-Mart.

“I feel that (Kohl's is) still smaller than Wal-Mart,” said Gomez, a 25-year-old coffee shop manager. “I'm feeding into that system, but I still try to stick it to the man by not going to Wal-Mart.”

With fewer than two weeks until Christmas, stores are stocked up for holiday shoppers. So how much does it matter that Gomez hands over part of her paycheck to some big chain stores or doesn't shop at local stores or Wal-Mart?

Maybe not too much, says Trinity University economics professor Richard Butler.

“Not every dollar you spend at a local store stays here (in the city), and not every dollar spent at a chain store x  goes somewhere else,” Butler said. “The answer is somewhere in the middle.”

And consumers will drop a lot of dollars on Christmas. Last December, Americans spent $31.4 billion in department stores, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Americans also spent $21 billion online that month. The average person is expected to shell out $859 on gifts, according to the American Research Group, Inc., a company that studies the U.S. economy.

But Gomez's statement might come as a bit of a surprise to Richard Perez, president of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce.

“I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a San Antonian who doesn't shop at Wal-Mart,” Perez said.

As America's largest retailer, Wal-Mart often takes the brunt of criticism toward big-box stores. Several chain stores have taken flack and been accused of treating their employees poorly, driving small businesses out of towns, homogenizing people and contributing to traffic congestion.

But to Perez, these stores pour money into the local economy and offer consumers choices and the opportunity to save money when Christmas shopping.

“The reality is the dollar is shrinking, and we have to be able to maximize the buck,” Perez said. “In a city like San Antonio, we need to have a diverse offering of places for you to go. San Antonians want to have choice. By having the big box and specialty boutique kind of places, they've provided us with that.”

Victoria Armstrong said that while she doesn't have a budget set, she plans to save a bundle of time and cash at chain stores.

Armstrong said she spent $200 at Kohl's on Black Friday and received a $40 gift card. When she went back to buy more gifts, Armstrong said her shopping bill was just 15 cents.

Larger cities such as San Antonio have room for stores like Kohl's and the local shops, Butler said. Big boxes pay taxes into the community, often donate money to charities and save consumers money. Wal-Mart drives down overall costs of retail goods by about 5 percent in urban areas, according to a study by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a pro-free market think tank.

“The prices are low, and almost anything you need in life is there,” Butler said about big-box stores.
Perez and Butler say there are also perks to shopping locally. The stores offer more unique items, the customer receives more attention and the customer becomes more connected to their community.
“A lot of these smaller mom-and-pop specialty stores are stores that have been here for a long time that have a very strong family tie,” Perez said. “I think the perk for them is knowing that they're supporting a tradition of San Antonio.”
Amy Krajcer says she feels like she's benefiting the local economy by sticking to independent shops for her Christmas shopping. Krajcer, a librarian, plans to do a lot of shopping at the Twig Book Shop, a local store on Broadway.
“The overhead and profits go to local people,” she said about shopping locally. “It stays in the community. I'm helping people who actually live here rather than some CEO of some company I'll never meet.”

Others might stick to chain retailers. Doug Dowlearn said he plans to purchase a Nintendo Wii for his teenagers at Best Buy because it's the most convenient place to search for the game system. But Dowlearn also says the holidays have become too commercial.

The holidays “used to be more for the kids,” he said. “Nowadays, it seems like the shopping list keeps getting longer and longer.”

Emily Messer | 210SA