Last Friday I returned from a four-day trip to Boston. Staggering back through the airport with bags bursting with my purchases, surrounded by Bermudians similarly laden down, I began to wonder just how effective the Buy Bermuda campaign really is.

Its biggest problem is that vague appeals to patriotism just don't have much sway in today's materialistic society. They're trumped by the greater selection, lower prices and friendlier service of US stores. The ads that I've seen also never really explain why I should shop at home, or what will happen if I don't. Perhaps they'd be more effective if they were more like AIDS ads, with black and white images, gloomy music, depressing statistics, and a doom-laden slogan like "Remember Triminghams: Buy Bermuda".

It doesn't help that the campaign is confined to the last two months of the year. If people are accustomed to shopping abroad the rest of the year, it seems a little optimistic to expect them to change their behaviour at Christmas. Another problem with "Buy Bermuda" is that there's no way to measure its success. However, the fact that only ten percent of retailers support it financially suggests that most have doubts about its efficacy.

No, if you want to persuade people to shop in Bermuda, you've got to make it worth their while.

The first step is for retailers to do a better job explaining why it's usually impossible for them to compete on price. Because of our geographical position, it costs more to transport goods to us.

Because of our tax system, duty must be paid on almost every item, even if the retailer doesn't manage to sell it. Because of our high cost of living, our shop workers must be paid more.

Because of our small size, our retailers cannot order in the quantities required to get the same discounts from their suppliers as the likes of Wal-Mart. Their next job is to find ways to make us happy to pay those prices. The best way of doing this is to offer service that's second to none.

It's almost impossible to step into a store in the US without a smiling sales assistant greeting you and asking if she can help. Here, surly, disinterested service often seems the norm.

Speaking in January 2002, Chamber of Commerce president Charles Gosling acknowledged that bad service was a recurring problem, more important than a lack of choice or high prices.

Poor service goes beyond a bad attitude, however. Some stores just seem uninterested in satisfying their customers. A local computer retailer once refused to exchange a rewritable CD I bought from them, even though it had been improperly manufactured, because it wasn't their policy to accept returns of such items.

The same store would not give a refund when a new PC purchased by my mother-in-law turned out to be afflicted with an intermittent display problem. Instead, they insisted on trying to repair it. When they couldn't, they told her she'd have to buy a new monitor from them to resolve the problem. With customer care like that, you may as well buy online. Even if the service isn't any better, at least you'll have paid less.

Then there's the resistance to opening on Sundays. Although the Government recently changed the law to make this possible, the reception from most retailers was frosty. Yet polls suggest that most of us would like to have this option.

Sometimes the stores are not flexible enough to satisfy their customers' demands. When I wanted to buy a new digital camera, I first went to a local store to ask it they could get it for me.

I was told that their next order wasn't being delivered for another six weeks, and that I'd be better ordering it online myself.

Bermuda's retailers must exceed their customers' expectations, not just meet them. Doing so will require them to devise more innovative ways of selling their products and building customer loyalty. Some already are. Pricebusters will get you any item from the IKEA catalogue. The Phoenix's Bookmart allows you to order books online, often for less money and with quicker delivery than Amazon.com. When will someone offer a similar service for CDs, DVDs and video games?

Another innovative idea with the potential to change Bermudians' spending habits is the Payback! reward card. Loyalty programmes are common elsewhere in the world, but Bermuda's retailers have been slow to recognise their value.

The Payback! card will reward customers of participating stores with between one and five percent of the value of their purchases, which can be spent with any participating retailer.

In addition, a select group of merchants will offer "mega rewards". The card was first unveiled last year but will be officially launched next month.

It's ideas such as these that will keep the dollars in Bermuda. The Buy Bermuda campaign, however, is redundant. If Bermuda's consumers are offered good reasons to shop here, those reasons will speak for themselves. If they are not, no advertising campaign will make any difference.

www.limeyinbermuda.com