1.   As a result, the food industry has tended to be regionally fragmented, with supermarket chains succeeding by becoming experts in the food preferences of local consumers.

2.   ATLANTA - WorldCom is poised to announce plans to take on BellSouth in the local consumer market in metro Atlanta.

3.   Both those units, however, are geared to business customers, and it is unclear how MCI Worldcom means to make a big splash in local consumer markets.

4.   A letter of good financial standing from a bank or an equivalent financial report is required, and the organization reviews local consumer protection agencies for complaints and resolutions.

5.   A weakness in the seat belts was detected after a local consumer safety magazine put the car through a series of crash tests.

6.   But Ken Gear, vice president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, thinks local consumers will be more frugal.

7.   But some local consumers are tentatively spending again.

8.   Check for complaints against a mover by calling the local consumer protection agency and the Better Business Bureau.

9.   Court decisions nominally aimed at protecting only local consumers, readers or litigants can therefore have an inexorable global impact.

10.   Farmers were allowed to sell to local consumers free of middlemen mark-ups and other trade tariffs.