I saw this on eMarketer this morning, too, and it is fine as far as it goes -- though it is far from a complete picture. Yes, trying to buy products online in Canada is painful -- lack of selection, not a lot of sellers, US firms won't ship here etc. Quick answer to that is that more US firms should aloow pricing in CAD and ship their stuff here -- that would solve most of the problem. But there are two things which are glaringly missing and misleading in the study:

1) Consumer services are BOOMING online in Canada -- especially one that I have more than a passing knowledge of, travel. We are talking billions and billions being *spent* (yes, real money through the turnstile) at any number of third-party and supplier sites, and continuing rapid growth of the category. Which is to say that the old "security and safety are keeping people away" chestnut is a pile of 1998 hooey -- people will respond that in a survey as an excuse, but the vast majority of folks are more than happy to hit "buy" when the product they want is available, the price is right and the service is convenient.

2) I might get kicked for this, but the fact that there aren't a lot of sites being developed just to service Canada is a *good* thing. Fact is, the effort and resources required to develop a world-class online business is so great, that anybody building such as beast with only the Canadian market in mind should have their head examined. Ditto for anyone funding such a venture. The real shame is that we Canadians aren't creating more based-here online businesses with US, if not global, aspirations. Try to imagine a US company *not* thinking about global distribution and localization as they build their plans. Uh huh, exactly.

- Stuart

I'd have to agree that shipping is the big deterant to e-commerce sales in Canada. I'd happily buy all sorts of things online, and I did when I lived in the U.S. but it costs a fortune to deliver it, and both the postal service and the shippers are outrageously slow.

So Stuart is right above when he says Canadians will buy. but they buy things that can be shipped online, such as Travel, concert tickets (but don't get me started on Rogers Sports, or Ticketmaster and their fees) etc., but when it comes to shipping physical products, I find the prices just too steep, and the time to deliver too long.

When I was in the U.S. you could order somethign online, and the shipping would be in the range of $1-3, and if you're buying something like, say, clothes the company would send you a prepaid shipping bag so anything that didn't fit you could send back. In Canada that sort of process would cost $30-50. That's the real difference. Until some of the major e-commerce companies put some pressure on the postal service and purolator (you know Canada post own purolator in Canada?) to fix up the shipping costs, we are not going to expect e-commerce of physical items to grow at the rates they have in the U.S.

Brian

Great point, Brian. Shipping is truly a big part of the challenge (as my Wife, the former Supply Chain Logistics Consultant, tends to remind me. Thanks, Hon :-)). But MAN if some of the other US and Euro kids would simply enable shipment to Canada, period -- shipping and duties and border stuff be danged, in the spirit of Just Ship The Dang Thing -- they *would get takers*. And then, if they got just the tiniest bit serious about it, and spent a little on enabling pricing and payment processing in CAD, smoothing shipping niggles, hired smart local staff for sourcing, service and marketing (with a localized site, requisite back-end fraud detection etc. -- I know it's not done for free), they could really move the market for relatively little invesment. Fact is, they seem neither interested nor aware. Sure, the US history of catalgoue shopping and a very dispersed population helped to put them ahead at the eComm get-go. But, the lack of access to foreign supply, when coupled with a lack of home-grown world-beaters, results in an underdeveloped Canadian eComm market in total.

- Stuart