BERLIN—“On November 30, let’s get
out and Shop Small,” is the tag line that American Express is using this year
to encourage holiday shoppers to patronize small independently owned retailers,
in the third year of a nationwide campaign it created and marketed for the
first Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Steve Frene, co-owner of Main
Street mainstay Victorian Charm, said he would prefer the event begin on a
different day, because holding it on the busiest Saturday of the year made it
difficult to discern a difference in the amount of shoppers who would normally
come into the store that day. “It almost gets lost,” he said.

However, he was quick to note the
concept conveyed was a good message to get across at any time.

He suggested holding it on the
weekend before Thanksgiving would be even more helpful because it would
encourage people to start shopping earlier. “But I love that somebody is
reminding people to shop local,” Frene said. “I do like that message,” he said,
adding “It’s more important this year than ever before.”

Frene is a retailer that accepts
American Express credit cards and has participated in the campaign during prior
years. He noted there is an online registration where businesses must sign up
to participate. Once they do, he said, American Express will post ads on their
website and send online links that the businesses can use to create customized
signage they print out and display.

Since the campaign was founded in
2010, American Express reported it received 1.2 million “likes” on its Facebook
page during the first month of the campaign’s launch; it was officially recognized
by the U.S. Senate in 2011; and it generated an estimated $5.5 billion in sales
nationwide in 2012.

Apparently the organizers at
American Express are hoping to capitalize on Small Business Saturday becoming
for small retailers what Black Friday has become for larger national chains, by
helping to drive customers to establishments where they might not otherwise
have shopped. Cardholders are directed to participating businesses in their zip
code areas where they can earn incentives like a $25 credit on their monthly
statements when they shop at local participating stores. As a result,
businesses can rack up small to large purchases like meals or gifts of $25 or
more on that day, while diners or shoppers receive essentially a rebate $25 for
what they purchase on SBS.

However, the credit card
company’s motives have also been criticized by some in the blogosphere as a
cynical marketing ploy. Some posters have pointed out that the rebate does not
apply to shoppers who do not use AmEx, and have dismissed it as “just marketing
fluff.”

Heather Layton, owner of Bungalow
Love, admitted she was an early skeptic of the campaign. “A few years ago, when
I first received a brochure about small business Saturday, I thought wow, how
cool.  As a small business owner, I
cannot compete with Target on Black Friday, or Amazon on Cyber Monday, so I was
excited about a day for independently owned shops,” she said in an e-mail in
response to an inquiry about her experience with the event.