1. Village shops and Post offices
By Dan and Martin

2. Declining
Thousands of village shops are closing each week because of internet world.
Many village shops are closing due to village pubs closing first.
Post offices are being told to improve their customer services otherwise they could get taken down out of business.

3. Net Sales & Store Sales

4. Growth
Post offices have been given a decade long lifeline with Royal Mail which should help to stave a fresh round of mass closures
MILLIONS of people now rent their movies the Netflix way. They fill out a wish list from the 50,000 titles on the company's Web site and receive the first few DVD's in the mail; when they mail each one back, the next one on the list is sent.
This means that the use of the post offices will be larger because that’s the only way to send things off within a village with ease. So they will get a lot of business from this.

5. Growth In the UK & US

6. Why Post offices and shops are important...
They offer the local community our every day products for a good price.
They are usually close to the local area.
They offer a good collection of jobs and services for people in the area.

7. THE END! :P

8. Why are they declining?
Post offices are declining profits because of other big companies and businesses that work via the internet, the post offices are too slow and are losing a lot of money because of this.
They are losing out because companies like Amazon offer most of the things the post office sell but at a reasonably lower price. Also the PO offers delivery but at a price when companies like Amazon do free delivery.

9. Can they beat their competition?
PO’s can not beat their competition as they do not have the technological knowledge and understanding that other companies like HSBC as they offer online finance services that PO’s mostly does not offer.

10. Losses of Post Offices
‘Post Offices play an important social and economic role in the communities they serve. With new technology, changing lifestyles and a wider choice of accessing services, people are visiting post offices less. The networks losses have risen to almost GBP4 million a week this year and it unsustainable in its present form.
The company estimates more than 80% of the rural network is unprofitable, and that on a purely commercial basis the network as a whole would consist only of 3,600-4,000 offices. The Post office contributes 9.3% Group revenue. It made an operating loss of GBP 111 million in 2006 but this was an improvement of GBP 12 million on the preceding year.

11. New services that post offices are providing
They offer online services such as being able to take out money without even having to go to the post office.
They are also adding new machines and technological ideas into the offices to make withdrawing money easier for the customers.