If a new report by BMO is to be believed, then Amazon.ca has become the destination of choice for most Canadians looking buying from online retail stores. The good news though is that Canadian retailers’ revenue is not suffering from it owing mostly to an absence of relevant product overlap between the traditional retailers and Amazon.
Amazon Prime was first launched in 2007 as a priority delivery service and charged member an annual fee for next-day deliveries. The charge also covered access to Prime’s music and video streaming services. Prime was then launched on Amazon.ca in early 2013. It costs the consumers $79 per year for next day deliveries though entertainment services are not provided.
Recently, BMO Capital Markets analyst Peter Sklar sought to find out how Amazon Prime was performing with particular interest in performances before and after the first Prime Day which was on July 15, 2015. He was also interested in assessing the performance of some Canadian retailers in the same period up to September 2015. Here is what he found.
In July 2015, Amazon.ca accounted for 1.94 percent of the total number of Canadian website visits through personal computers and mobile devices (exclusive ofmobile apps). This was a 0.9 percent increase from the 2014 figure which was 1.85 percentand 0.28 percent more than the visits for June 2015 which stood at 1.66 percent. Between July and September 205, the figures rose 0.3 percent to reach 1.97 percent.
“There has been a significant increase in Amazon’s share of visits post the launch of Amazon Prime,” concluded the research. “This shows that Canadians do ascribe value to this paid service.”
Interestingly, by midday on July 15, the general consensus among consumers on social media was that the Prime Day deals were underwhelming both in quality and quantity. At that time, most of the discounts seemed to have fallen short of consumer expectations.
To the reprieve of Canadian brick-and-mortar retailers that use the web for different eCommerce activities, the report also shows that Amazon’s Prime Day deals won’t seriously affect traffic to the retailers’ websites. Top Prime Day sellers included technology hardware and baby products – not the core merchandising areas for traditional retailers.
Though this may change in the future, for now, every Canadian retailer is encouraged to get a Canadian merchant account from a provider such as eMerchantBroker.com and win even more customers by providing secure transactions!
