Holiday Shopping Likely to Grow This Year: Report

Retailers in Canada can expect modest growth in holiday shopping this year as Canadians become more accustomed to the current economic environment, according to a new report.

In its annual holiday outlook survey, financial consulting firm Deloitte reports a 1 to 2 percent sales growth in the upcoming holiday season.

“Eighty percent of our respondents in the survey said that the economy would be the same or improve in the next year. That’s up from 68 percent the year before, so we think that people are just really more confident,” says Eric Matusiak, senior manager in retail consulting practice at Deloitte.

“You can’t put things off forever, so people I think are buying again, but modestly, and they are very price-conscious.”

The growth in sales, however, will be split between online offerings, cross-border merchants, and U.S. retailers now operating in Canada, notes the report.

Matusiak says Canadian retailers have already been impacted by American competition as many retailers in Canada are American-owned. With more American stores coming north of the border, the competition will become even more stiff.

“With the greater number of U.S. entrants coming in, it’s forcing incumbent retailers in Canada to up their game, to refresh their stores, refresh their products, and to improve their customer service,” he says.

‘Good Time to be a Consumer’

The market is also becoming increasingly more price-competitive as consumers are taking advantage of web and mobile applications to conduct research and price-checking before making purchases.

The report found that close to 60 percent of Canadians will use the Internet when shopping this holiday season, while over 55 percent plan to do some of their holiday shopping online.

“It’s a good time to be a consumer in Canada,” notes Matusiak.

“We’ve got the tools to give us a lot of choices in terms of how we research, and we can buy lots of products online. We can find some of those in stores, so there’s a lot of power in consumer’s hands right now.”

Retailers are also working hard on building excitement for customers to encourage shopping in the current economy.

Over the next year, Canada will have more digitally enhanced stores that take advantage of emerging technologies to help their business, according to the report.

These new technologies could be mobile connectivity for store associates so they can help consumers more efficiently, or radio frequency identification hangers that interact with a screen to show customers information about the item they have picked out from the rack, to name a few examples.

“As consumers change their shopping patterns and gravitate towards completing more of their holiday shopping online, retailers will continue to see the importance of the convergence of their multiple channels and offer compelling reasons for customers to continue to visit the store,” the report says.

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