The product selection and retailer options Canadians find online with merchants based in Canada trail their expectations, and that leads many to look at international shopping options. 67% of Canadian online shoppers purchased from a foreign e-retailer last year, according to PayPal Inc., making Canada the seventh-highest nation for cross-border online shopping among 29 surveyed.

E-retailers based outside of Canada have swooped in to tap into the underserved Canadian online market as more turn to the web to shop.

Spending data supports this. Statistics Canada, Canada’s national statistics agency, estimates Canadian consumers spent $12.06 billion (all figures shown are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted) on retail goods with Canadian online merchants in 2014, the most recent year for which data is available from the agency. But estimates of 2014 online retail spending by Canadians from Forrester Research Inc. and eMarketer Inc. provide a sense of what’s up for grabs. Forrester estimates Canadians spent $22.3 billion online in 2014, and eMarketer estimates $25.37 billion (see chart, page 38). That suggests foreign e-retailers claimed $10 billion to $13 billion in sales from Canadian shoppers in 2014.

And the opportunity has grown since then: Online sales in Canada grew…

To get immediate access to the rest of this article and thousands more, sign up for a free Strategy Membership using the Join for Free button below. If you’re already a member, please sign in.