Why are Canadians hesitant to buy on line?
For most people buying anything on line used to be a daunting
ordeal. Whether you are looking for the
perfect briefcase or that trendy gold plated ring, shopping on line can be very
frightening for the novice. Although
most Americans and Europeans especially the Orientals are very comfortable
shopping on line I found that most Canadians are still hesitant to do their
shopping on line. They tend to not trust
this system of modern day shopping. Even
though this is slowly changing for the better as they get more and more comfortable
with the growing trends I believe that it will take perseverance on the part of
Canadian on line businesses to reach their Canadian customers.
The First reason I
suppose is the fact that the population of Canada is roughly only 32 million.
The United States of America has 307,222,000.
According to the 2005 Canadian census
the population of Quebec was 7,560,592 with newcomers arriving monthly. A province
such as Québec with its mother tongue
being French it is estimated close to 82%.
We need to also consider all of the other provinces who have French
speaking citizens and we need to factor this in as well. English is the universal language especially
when it comes to business.
The percentage of
French being what it is, it would only stand to reason that with so few French
on line businesses it is not that they are reluctant to shop on line, but
simply that their options are maybe limited. I have to point out that there are
simply not that many Canadian consumer product companies selling online.
Most on line businesses
are in English and according to e-commerce statistics for 2004, English
accounted for 35.2% for on line language while only 4.2% accounted for French
on line language. It is estimated that
on line sales account for only 2% of sales in Canada while 6% accounts for
sales in the United States. I am certain
that these numbers go up every year, but to what extent I am not convinced.
Another reason I found was that it only took 38 years for
the telephone and only 13 years for television to reach 50 million users. The
use of the internet took only 4 years to reach 50 million users making it the
fastest growing technology the world had ever seen. All this being said it is interesting that
many Canadians are still a little afraid to take the plunge and buy on line
such things as: music boxes, evening purses or even men's accessories. Long
distance shopping was not common for Canadians in the 60's and 70's while the
Europeans and the United States are used to this type of shopping making it
comfortable for them to shop on line.
My final reason is that I believe is that per
capita Americans were getting more credit cards with higher limits than their
Canadian counterparts. With the economic
situation of today I believe this to be another important factor to
consider. Let's not forget that "Fears about Fraud and
Identify Theft" remains the biggest barrier for shopping on line. Most on line
merchants have very secure sites since they also need to protect not only their
customers but their own business as well.
For these reasons these securities are crucially important to them.
Written by: Nicole Cousineau
