Continuing our coverage of the Canadian market begun in Catalog Success’ The Corner View e-newsletter last week (see www.catalogsuccess.com/story/story.bsp?sid=53237&var=story#cornerview ), we came across a new survey released by Statistics Canada, which found that 2006 online sales for Canadian companies reporting them rose 40 percent to $49.9 billion. It was the fifth consecutive year of double-digit increases.
More than 19,000 public and private companies were surveyed for the report. The majority of the 2006 sales, about 68 percent, were business-to-business sales. Four sectors account for most of the e-commerce activity in Canada: manufacturing, transportation, warehousing, and both wholesale trade and retail trade. The survey said retail trade, with $4.7 billion in goods and services sold online, was one of the fastest growing sectors. Other findings about Canadian online retail trade included:
88 percent of retail firms with 100 employees or more had Web sites,
39 percent of retailers said their goods and services did not lend themselves to online sales, down from 50 percent in 2005,
40 percent said the ability to reach new customers via the Internet was a benefit, up from 35 percent in 2005, and
37 percent said the second benefit was better coordination with suppliers, clients or business partner.
For more information, go to www.statcan.ca .