By Kristy Dorsey
Five towns and cities in Scotland are leading the way in a new festive challenge to support local shopping in places throughout the UK.
Launched on November 20 by Scottish fintech Miconex, the leaderboard of the Great Town and City Christmas Quiz is currently headed up by Elgin with more than 2,000 points. Edinburgh and Perth are in third and fifth place, with Falkirk and Kirkcaldy ninth and 10th in a field of more than 70 from across the UK.
Nearly 5,000 entries have been received in the prize draw for a chance to win a £1,500 multi-venue gift card that can be spent in a variety of shops, restaurants, leisure and service providers across a particular area. The programme is designed to promote support of high street retailers that have endured hugely damaging restrictions on trading throughout the pandemic.
READ MORE: Aberdeen businesses urged to sign up to gift card initiative to boost local economy
“The Great Town and City Quiz was born of a need to support our places and also show how important local shopping is,” Miconex managing director Colin Munro said.
“The retail landscape has changed considerably in 2020, but so too has consumer behaviour. People want to support their local merchants because they realise the threat these businesses are under.”
Mr Munro noted that the popularity of multi-venue gift cards has been rising amid the increasing number of high-profile retailers such Debenhams which have gone bust. This has left consumers worried that single-retailer gift cards could be left worthless.
READ MORE: Royal Bank calls on Scots to support local businesses this Christmas
The quiz tests knowledge of popular culture with questions themed around Christmas and famous gifts, such as the $1.1 million present presented by Richard Taylor to Elizabeth Taylor in 1969. The closing date for the competition is December 18.
“It’s fantastic to see Scotland so well represented in the Great Town and City Quiz, particularly our places with active programmes which shows that the shop local message is being heard loud and clear,” Mr Munro added.
“But we’re also happy to see other places that don’t have a programme getting involved, like Inverness and Livingston. It’s too early to say who will take the crown for the smartest place in Britain, anything could happen.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here