When the Global Economy Stops Feeling Fair, We Start Buying Local

There is something interesting happening to the way we spend money.

The global economy is still growing. The IMF currently expects world economic growth of around 3% in 2026, so this is not a story about the global economy simply grinding to a halt. But growth is happening alongside geopolitical instability, disrupted trade, slower trade growth and continuing uncertainty.

And sitting underneath all of that is something harder to measure.

Trust.

For a long time, people living in wealthy developed countries such as Australia could reasonably believe that the basic systems around them were relatively stable. Governments changed. Markets went up and down. Companies made profits. There were obviously scandals, but there was still a broad sense that institutions worked, laws mattered and if you worked hard enough you could probably build a decent life.

I am not sure that assumption feels quite as comfortable as it once did.

Housing has become extraordinarily difficult for younger and many older Australians. Everyday expenses take up more of the household budget. Global companies can become enormously profitable while ordinary customers are counting the difference between one supermarket shop and the next. We can see wars, inequality, political influence, corporate behaviour and humanitarian crises unfolding on our phones almost as they happen.

We now know more about how the machine works.

And once people start looking behind the curtain, they start asking different questions.

Not simply: Can I afford this? But: Who am I giving my money to?

What interests me as a marketer is what happens when people stop believing the system is working equally well for everyone.

Most people understand that businesses need to make money. We expect companies to make profits. We invest in them, work for them and buy things from them.

That is not really the problem. The problem begins when consumers feel they are being asked to pay more while receiving less – less service, less accountability or less confidence that the rules apply equally.

> If wages feel stagnant while corporate profits climb, people notice.

> If essential services become more expensive while customer service gets worse, they notice.

> If enormous companies seem to operate by a different set of rules from the local business down the road, they notice that too.

And when people see undue political influence, conflicts of interest, tax avoidance, questionable supply chains or corruption allegations in countries they previously regarded as stable and trustworthy, it chips away at something important.

The assumption of fairness.

Transparency International’s latest global Corruption Perceptions Index makes that shift difficult to dismiss. Its 2025 index found the global average had fallen to 42 out of 100 and that only five countries now scored above 80, compared with 12 a decade earlier. It also identified deterioration in several established democracies, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and France.

It means the idea that corruption, undue influence and weakened accountability are problems belonging only to “somewhere else” is becoming much harder to maintain.

And Australian consumers can see it.

Twenty five years ago, some of us knew surprisingly little about the companies we bought from.

You saw an advertisement. You went to the shop. You bought the product. Perhaps you read something about the company or brand in a magazine or newspaper or heard about them on the radio.

Now, before your morning coffee, you can learn who owns a company, where a product is manufactured, how workers are treated, whether executives have donated to political campaigns, what environmental controversies the business has faced and what thousands of customers think of its service.

That information can be 100% accurate or it can be messy, inaccurate or manipulated.

Social media certainly does not guarantee truth. But it has made power much more visible.

For marketers, this matters because the traditional separation between a company and its behaviour is disappearing. You cannot have one brand story on your website and another reality circulating online indefinitely. Consumers increasingly connect the two.

Australians are still spending, but we’re becoming extremely value conscious.

Australia Post’s 2026 eCommerce research found that 81% of Australian online shoppers look around for deals. Basket sizes became smaller in 2025 even while online shopping continued to grow, suggesting people have not stopped consuming – they are simply becoming more deliberate about how they do it.

We sometimes talk about the “cost-of-living” crisis as though everyone simply stops buying things. We don’t. We reprioritise. We wait for the sale. We compare. We cancel one subscription and keep another.

We spend less in one area so we can still travel, eat out or do something that makes life enjoyable.

And increasingly, some consumers are asking whether the money they do spend could stay closer to home.

“Support local” used to sound a little sentimental. Buy your fruit and veggies from the local greengrocer. Get your meat from the friendly Butcher around the corner. Get your morning coffee from the independent café. 

Now there is an economic argument sitting beside the emotional one.

Research conducted by Roy Morgan for Australian Made in 2025 found 73% of Australians surveyed were willing to buy more Australian-made products to reduce reliance on imports, while 72% said they were prepared to pay more for locally made goods. Around two-thirds said they intended to buy more Australian-made products over the following year. Because the research was commissioned by Australian Made, I would treat the precise figures in that context, but the direction of sentiment is significant.

Westpac economists have also modelled what could happen if Australian households simply redirected part of their existing spending rather than spending more. Their modelling suggested shifting $100 of weekly household expenditure towards Australian products and services could add around $16 billion to nominal GDP and support approximately 38,000 jobs.

That is where “buy local” becomes much more than a nice sticker on the door or badge on your hessian shopping bag.

For some consumers, spending is starting to feel like a small economic vote

Do I give this $40 to an enormous overseas marketplace? Or do I spend it with a local, Australian business?

Do I go to the global chain or the café down the road?

Do I save five dollars buying the imported version, or pay a little more for something made here?

Price still matters enormously. Plenty of households simply cannot afford to make every purchase according to principle. That reality needs to be respected too. 

This is where the story gets more nuanced. It would be easy to say everyone has lost faith in institutions. That isn’t actually what the Australian evidence tells us.

Perhaps what we are seeing is not blanket cynicism. It is more selective trust. People are becoming more comfortable questioning institutions while still believing institutions matter. And I think something very similar is happening with brands.

Consumers do not necessarily hate corporations. They dislike feeling manipulated by them.

They do not necessarily reject profit. They reject feeling exploited.

They are not demanding that every company become a charity. They are asking whether the relationship feels reasonable.

For smaller Australian businesses, this shift is actually a huge advantage.

You are unlikely to beat a multinational on scale. You probably cannot beat Temu, Amazon or a giant retailer on sheer volume, logistics and purchasing power.

But you can offer something those businesses find much harder to manufacture.

Proximity. Accountability. Personality. Community.

Those are not soft brand attributes. They can reduce perceived risk.

A customer can know who you are. They can see where the money goes. They can email you and possibly get an answer from the person who owns the business. They can recommend you to somebody around the corner.

That relationship has economic value, but it also has emotional value. In an increasingly impersonal global economy, being recognisably human is becoming a competitive advantage.

When you buy something locally, the transaction does not necessarily finish at the eftpos machine.

A local business pays Australian wages. It buys goods and services from other businesses. Its employees spend money in their communities. It may employ a local accountant, designer, photographer, developer, cleaner or courier. Money moves.

The same is true when money leaves the local economy, which is why people are beginning to understand purchasing as something more than consumption. It can also be meaningful participation.

Not every decision needs to become a political statement. Nobody wants to perform a moral audit before buying a packet of biscuits.

But there is a growing awareness that where we spend our money matters.

It means brands need to stop assuming price, convenience and product features are the whole conversation. They still matter enormously. But so do trust, transparency and provenance.

If you are Australian made, tell people. If you manufacture locally, explain where. If you employ locally, let customers see the people behind the business. If your supply chain is something to be proud of, make it visible. If you contribute to your community, talk about it without turning it into some enormous self-congratulatory brand campaign

And most importantly, don’t manufacture a story that isn’t true.

Consumers have more information than ever before, and they are good at spotting the difference between genuine values and a marketing department trying to invent something.

Globalisation gave consumers extraordinary choice, convenience and lower prices. Those benefits are not disappearing. But alongside them, some consumers are placing greater value on accountability, provenance and knowing where their money goes.

We cannot personally control international trade, interest rates, global conflicts or the behaviour of multinational corporations. But we can choose who receives the next dollar we spend.

For local and Australian businesses, that choice creates an opportunity – not simply to say “support local”, but to give people a genuine reason to want to.