Canadians spent nearly $2-billion shopping on the Internet in 2001, up "substantially" from the previous year with someone in nearly a third of Canadian households booting up to either buy or browse, Statistics Canada said Thursday.
Still, Internet purchases remain a fraction of $621-billion in annual personal spending in this country, although the figures suggest "households increasingly used the Internet as a method of purchasing products from both Canadian and foreign vendors," the government agency said.
In total about 2.2 million households spent about $2-billion shopping on the Internet in 2001, according to the e-commerce component of the agency's household Internet use survey.
Those households placed 13.4 million orders over the Internet from a variety of locations.
"This level of electronic commerce was up substantially from the year before," Statscan said.
However, direct comparisons between 2001 and 2000 spending levels weren't available because the most recent survey reflects purchases made from various locations. The previous survey had looked only purchases made from home.
Substantial increase
In 2000, an estimated 1.5 million households spent $1.1-billion, placing 9.1 million orders from home.
"From January to December 2001, an estimated four million households, about one-third of all households in Canada, had at least one member that used the Internet to support purchasing decisions, either by window shopping or placing on-line orders," Statscan said.
On a regional basis, households in British Columbia boasted the highest average Internet spending household in 2001, while those in Quebec spent the least.
"This reflects the fact that British Columbia has one of the highest adoption rates for Internet use and that Quebec has one of the lowest," Statscan said.
On average, B.C. households spent $1,394 on-line apiece last year. The national average was $880.
Ontario, however, remained the biggest market for on-line spending, with purchases in that province accounting for 42 per cent of total expenditures in 2001.
Atlantic Canada reported the highest number of orders at 6.9 per e-commerce household, compared with the national average of 5.9, Statscan said.
Travel, tickets popular
About 748,000 households used the Internet for the first time to buy something in 2001, bringing the total number of on-line shopping households to 2.2 million, according to the report.
About 16 per cent of households used e-commerce for travel. Other popular purchases included tickets for concerts, ballets, movies and sporting events.
While people were less likely to make big-ticket purchases on-line, although about a quarter of all Web window shoppers reported browsing for furniture and appliances on the Internet.
For Canadian retailers on-line, the picture was relatively bright, according to the report.
For every $10 spent by households on on-line purchases last year, $6.50 was spent buying directly from Canadian sites. Canadians spent a total of $680-million — or 35 per cent of their on-line spending — on non-Canadian sites, the report said.
The spending increase also came despite the fact that Canadians concerns about on-line security were little diminished.
Security and privacy concerns were unchanged in 2001 compared with the previous survey, Statscan said. About 80 per cent of Web window shoppers expressed some concern about the security of on-line transactions.
"About 72 per cent of households that made payments on-line opted to ignore their concern and use their credit card on-line anyway," the report said.
© The Globe and Mail
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