North America is the second largest B2C E-Commerce region globally. Within this region, Canada remains behind the USA in terms of size of the B2C E-Commerce market, relative share of B2C E-Commerce of total retail sales, as well as online shopper penetration. Nevertheless, Canada ranks among the top 10 global B2C E-Commerce markets, and is expected to outpace the USA in terms of growth rate in the next four to five years.

The main drivers for B2C E-Commerce growth in Canada are, among others, increased online spending per shopper and overall shopper penetration, as well as rising M-Commerce and improved attractiveness of domestic online merchants’ offering, fueled by currency weakening with respect to the U.S. dollar. The same factor contributes to the expected slight decline in importance of cross-border shopping, which as of early 2015 was done by over three quarters of online shoppers. In mid-2015, cross-border shopping was perceived as increasingly costly by over 50% of Canadian consumers. Nevertheless, foreign players, especially U.S.-based, still dominate the market. Among them, Amazon was by far the most significant competitor in the market.

While the fate of cross-border shopping remains unclear, predictions about both M-Commerce and omnichannel involvement clearly point in the direction of further sales increase. M-Commerce is expected to account for over half of Canadian online retail sales in the near future, while both showrooming and webrooming continue to rise, albeit still being practiced by less than 20% of Internet users in the country. With further progress in the areas of online shopper penetration and diminishing logistics costs, Canadian B2C E-Commerce is likely to retain its positive growth rates in the future.

More information on the B2C E-Commerce market developments in Canada can be found in our report “Canada B2C E-Commerce Market 2015”.