Online retailers are poised to leave Canadian brick-and-mortar shops with a lump of coal in their stockings this holiday shopping season.
Just two-thirds of Canadian shoppers plan to make their holiday purchases exclusively at physical outlets this year, according to a Solutions Research Group (SRG) poll released October 17.
That’s down from 2013, when 38% of shoppers planned to only make buy items from physical stores as opposed to hunting for bargains online.
The poll found 21% of shoppers plan to buy more online this year and 67% plan to do at least part of their shopping through ecommerce.
SRG said Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is expected to be the busiest online retailer in Canada this holiday season, followed by eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), Walmart (NASDAQ:WMT), Chapters Indigo and Best Buy, respectively.
Although large corporations appear well positioned to cash in on Canadians growing appetite for ecommerce, an October 7 report from the Internet Association (IA) cautioned small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) are falling behind when it comes to online offerings.
The IA — an online advocacy group representing the likes of eBay, Amazon and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) — found just 10.1% of SMEs were selling online compared with 30.5% of large businesses.
The report also pointed out that although Canadians are some of the world’s heaviest users of the Internet, only 3% of the country’s retail economy is online. In the U.S., 7% of the retail economy is online, while 23% of the U.K.’s retail economy is online.
