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Online Shopping Outside the US?
Michael Roy asks: "With the boom of online shopping, especially eBay-esque sites, those of us north of the border (or anywhere outside the US) have noticed a problem: most online stores are in the US! In Canada we have North American Free Trade Agreement, but even so we wind up paying huge tarrifs, taxes, and brokerage fees to buy from US websites. While there are a few online stores outside the US, most US stores with Canadian locations don't have Canadian sites. I don't mean to bash Americans, but is online shopping a US-only thing? Is the rest of the world just more expensive to buy for?" If online-shopping is going to become a thing of the future, this is something that we really need to address. It seems the internet has gone a long way in erasing the political borders that sit between the people, but maybe it hasn't gone quite far enough. Is this even a problem that can be solved with technology (as taxes, tarrifs and brokerage fees are political creatures)?
The importance of a .CA name is that it indicates strictly Canadian content. To register a .CA domain one had to have offices in two provinces, or be federally incorporated, or have a trademark. Even so, only one domain name was allowed per organization. And the process takes well over a week.
Finally, after many years, this will change as of November 1st 2000 when any Canadian resident can register as many domains as she or he wants. Still, what about companies that did meet the requirement? Can you explain why (until recently) more Canadians bought books across the border from Amazon.com than from Chapters.CA? That has to do with marketing, plain and simple. Amazon was first to market and has built up an excellent user experience. I still go to Amazon for the reader's book reviews before buying from Chapters.
Perhaps more important that domain names is the issue of payment. Canadian banks have been slow to offer online credit card merchant account systems. Small companies just couldn't open a site and sell strictly to Canadians in Canadian dollars. Only the large bricks-and-mortar stores had the resources to implement online payment.
It's not an issue of consumers being scared away from online payments, either. Look how Canadians have taken to debit cards, telephone banking and online banking! We're ready to spend, but there's nowhere to go!
Regarding the observation that most US stores with Canadian locations don't have Canadian websites, don't forget that the Canadian operations are different entities, and make their own decisions independently from the parent company. It would be a poor business practice for a multinational to attempt to force its branches to be exactly like the US parent company, including selling online.
As the issues are addressed, I think we'll see more Canadian online e-tailers. Be prepared to invest in Canadian banks as they start to rake in more profits by offering easier online payment systems in the form of turnkey solutions for startup web companies.
David