For the past 85 years, the Michigan Retailers Association (MRA) has been the voice of Michigan’s retail industry. MRA currently represents more than 15,000 brick-and-mortar and online stores among its 5,000 business members.
If a portion of Michigan’s out-of-state remote sales were shifted to the state’s brick-and-mortar businesses, the impact of local retail stores on Michigan’s economy would be greater as more dollars remain in the state. MRA has partnered with Public Sector Consultants (PSC) for the past several years to measure the effects of making a 10 percent shift. This report presents findings based on Michigan’s 2024 retail sales.
PSC used national-level data to generate Michigan retail sales estimates and modeled the 10 percent shift from remote sales to in-person sales using Impact Analysis for Planning (IMPLAN), an input-output modeling tool that traces transactions among and between industry sectors to quantify how activity in one part of the economy affects others. PSC estimated the direct, indirect, and induced effects of this spending modification on Michigan’s economy.