Canadian Businesses Are Buying Online, Selling Is Another Story

Canadian consumers and businesses did 26% more buying online in 2007. Statistics Canada data shows Canadian e-commerce revenue hit $62.7 billion but that number still represents only a small fraction of overall economic activity.

The real story here is the ‘buying vs. selling’ paradigm. Canadian businesses are using the internet to make purchases in larger numbers. 48% of private sector companies used the internet for purchasing, and for public sector companies that number was 82%. However, despite the growth in purchasing, Canadian businesses have been quite slow to begin selling their goods and services online. Only 8% of private sector businesses used the internet to sell, while 16% of public sector companies sold online.

Perhaps the biggest surprise in the report showed that while 87% of Canadian businesses used the internet, only 41% had a web site. Clearly there is a lot of room for growth and over time we should see Canadian businesses get more aggressive promoting themselves online both via an established web presence as well as using e-commerce to sell their wares and services.

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