Analyzing Top Online Shopping Sites in Canada: A Literature Review

This literature review analyzes the success factors of the top five online shopping sites in Canada, including Shop.CA, Amazon.CA, Bestbuy.CA, Walmart.com, and Jet.com. It discusses key strategies such as SEO ratings, revenue channels, market improvisation, customer acquisition, and customer dealing. Shop.CA's third-party vendor model and competitive pricing, Amazon's cost reduction policy, Bestbuy.ca's innovative features, and Walmart's decentralized delivery system are highlighted. The review also touches upon the potential future market dominance of Amazon and Walmart due to their competitive employability and market enticement strategies. The analysis considers consumer behavior and shopping preferences, particularly in electronics, cosmetics, and apparel, to understand the competitive dynamics within the Canadian e-commerce landscape. This document is available on Desklib, a platform providing study tools and solved assignments for students.

Running head: LITERATURE REVIEW
Literature Review
Student’s Name
University Name
Author’s Note

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................3
2. Discussion..............................................................................................................................3
3. Discussion..............................................................................................................................7
Reference List and Bibliography...............................................................................................9

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1. Introduction
The literature review discusses the various exponential factors that have been
detrimental to the positioning of the various online shopping sites in Canada and the allied
area. The factors like SEO ratings, delivery timings, review returns, authenticity of product
and so on are essential for the listing of the companies. In light of the discussed context, the
positive factors that have been keeping the top listed sites intact in their spots have also been
discussed.
2. Discussion
The five articles that have been identified, emphasis have been laid upon some
common strategic factors like SEO ratings, revenue channels, market improvisation,
customer acquisition rate and customer dealing strategies. Based on these parameters, these
sites have made a distinct comparison between the various online shopping sites that deserve
the top five positions among all the shopping sites of Canada. Shop.CA, Amazon Retail,
Bestbuy.CA and two sites of Walmart are the biggest grossers and occupies the prime spot in
the country. This literature review concerns the success factors of the best 5 online shopping
sites in Canada. The highest in the revenue line among the indigenous and MNC shopping
sites of Canada is the Shop.Ca. (H.A.H, Hettiarachchi and Anjalika, 2017). This ecommerce
more than site took up the role of being a third party vendor for its approved business
partners who enjoyed the facility of listing and selling their products online with the
ecommerce site. The credibility of the online shopping site is reflected by the fact that they
have more than 15 million different SKUs in their shopping portal.
The highest in the revenue line among the indigenous and MNC shopping sites of
Canada is the Shop.Ca. (H.A.H, Hettiarachchi and Anjalika, 2017). This ecommerce more
than site took up the role of being a third party vendor for its approved business partners who

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enjoyed the facility of listing and selling their products online with the ecommerce site. The
credibility of the online shopping site is reflected by the fact that they have more than 15
million different SKUs in their shopping portal.
Shop.CA’s immense potential for acquiring market equity, led EMERGE Equity firm to buy
out the ecommerce site. According to the opinion of Kooti et al. (2016), product listings of
third party vendors are directly linked with the sales volume they acquire over the year. The
CEO of the company, Ghassan Halazon claims that they understand the psyche of the online
shoppers in Canada. Tracing the words of the CEO, Ortega (2015), gave opined that the
ample convenience shopping opportunities is the biggest success factor for the website. They
cover huge range of product categories. Combined with that the factor of competitive pricing
is another factor for the success of the site. In order to keep the prices competitive, the
company gives a sales subsidy to the partner wholesalers. This is why Shop.CA have been
able to keep their prices low by 5 to 5.5% compared to the other online shopping sites.
Figure 1: Customer Acquisition rate of Shop.CA
(Source: Hadi Kiapour et al. 2015)

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At the second spot among the best five online shopping sites of Canada is
Amazon.CA. Amazon is currently the world’s largest online retailer. The cost reduction
policy is the primary success factor for Amazon in Canada. The company like Shop.CA
enters in to contract with third party sellers. Amazon enlists with the shopping brands as off
suite wholesalers. As an outcome, the company keep their procuring rates very low. Another
competitive feature of Amazon Canada is that the purchasers can compare the prices of the
same product from various sellers and thus they can get the best price for any product in
terms of sales volume, Amazon is minimally lower than Shop.CA (Wu Shen & Chang, 2015).
According to the opinion of Williams and Woodacre (2016), the added factors of advantage
for Shop.CA over Amazon is that being local players they have advantage in terms of last
mile delivery and better understanding of the demographic trends.
The third in list is Bestbuy.ca. Owing to some of the recently implemented innovative
business methodologies like test and buy feature that any consumer is applicable to with an
annual subscription fee of $20 Canadian Dollar and 3d printing on the website with the
impression of the buyer’s face, the website have immensely popular after its re-launch in
2017. The net sales volume of this electronic appliances and accessories selling site is much
lower compared to the previous two. However, consumer preference rate in the recent fiscal
quarters have led to the positioning of the website in the list of top five.
The last two positions in the list of top five is occupied by the two online shopping sites of
Walmart retail stores namely Watmart.com as well as Jet.com. Walmart.ca have been famous
in the country owing to a recent improvisation that nobody in the ecommerce sectors have
been able to advent. Walmart have very less number of delivery executives. They have
decentralised the delivery system by creating a large number of shipping hubs all over the
regions. The company gives two kinds of delivery options to the buyers (Williams &
Woodacre, 2016). They can either visit their nearby hubs and puck up the products. They can

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also accept the product at their home. However, the latter is costlier and the service is
relatively delayed.
Figure 2: Target fulfilment rate of Walmart
(Source: Walmart.com)
This service have become sensationally popular in Canada, as Cheng and Ho (2015), speaks
for it. Jet.com is another site which can be imagined to be occupying the fifth spot in the list.
This is a subsidiary site of Walmart, which is particularly created for selling products at
discounted pricing. The step also includes the best quality refurbished products. This site
after being launched in the last quarter of 2017, have occupied 29% of the demographic
customer base by 2018. According to the discussions of Bilgihan, Kandampully and Zhang
(2016), the customers of Jet.ca can negotiate for best prices and if they can site that they are
getting the products at a competitively lower price compared to the listed price at Jet.ca, the
customers get some flat discounts from the site.

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Besides the 90 day free return policy is another factor that have enticed the consumers in
Canada (Kim et al. 2015). However, Walmart sites have taken up a unique price competitive
strategy since it might so happen that most of the products can be available at a competitive
price than the Walmart price. There is a department in Walmart known as the Price
perception effort centre. This department is a component of the IT wing of the company that
have tracking radar for the most competitive prices (Barysevich, 2017). The company tracks
the most competitive online enlisted price for a product in a single day and keeps their price
for the same product lower than the most competitive price for at least 15 minutes in a day,
without declaring it as a promotional offer or anything alike. As an impact, the customers on
comparing the prices from the service portal of Walmart gets to see the price of Walmart as
the most competitive price.
It is evident that the big brands like Amazon and Walmart would gain the market
advantage after this initial phase of market entry. These brands can easily entice the market
channels and form a base of loyal customers. Another factor that these big brands can draw in
their favour is competitive employability. As such, they would be able to attract the
experienced employees from organisations like Shop.ca and Bestbuy.ca. Hence, it is
predictable that by the end of 2020 or by the second quarter of 2021, Amazon or Walmart
would be in a position of competition for the first spot among the best online shopping sites.
3. Discussion
The target population of the consumers is mainly bifurcated between the online
customers of electronics and accessories, cosmetics and apparel products. According to the
views of Buzzfeed.com, (2018), the online sales of these products are mostly high for
Amazon, followed by Walmart stores and Bestbuy.CA. Hence, it can be analysed that
Shop.CA is gaining in customer strength owing to the versatility of the products. Again,

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Barysevich (2017), opines that the shopping propensity per item is much higher for Walmart
and Amazon by a high margin.

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Reference List and Bibliography
Barysevich, A. (2017). 4 Most Important Ranking Factors, According to SEO Industry
Studies. Searchenginejournal.com. Retrieved on 4th October 2018. Retrieved from
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/4-important-ranking-factors-according-seo-industry-
studies/184619/
Bilgihan, A., Kandampully, J., & Zhang, T. (2016). Towards a unified customer experience
in online shopping environments: Antecedents and outcomes. International Journal of
Quality and Service Sciences, 8(1), 102-119.
Buzzfeed.com, (2018). 12 Of the Best Online Shopping Sites for Canadians. Because there's
more to life than shipping fees. Retrieved on 08th October 2018. Retrieved on 08th October
2018. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeed.com/cylapanin/best-online-canadian-shopping-
sites
Cheng, Y. H., & Ho, H. Y. (2015). Social influence's impact on reader perceptions of online
reviews. Journal of Business Research, 68(4), 883-887.
Finder.com, (2018). The ultimate list of the top 50 online stores. Retrieved on 08th October
2018. Retrieved from https://www.finder.com/online-shopping
Goes, P. B., Guo, C., & Lin, M. (2016). Do incentive hierarchies induce user effort?
Evidence from an online knowledge exchange. Information Systems Research, 27(3), 497-
516.
H.A.H., Hettiarachchi & Anjalika, K.M.G.S.. (2017). Determining the Factors Influencing
Online Shopping Purchase Intention. 10.13140/RG.2.2.20431.38564. Retrieved on 04th
October 2018. Retrieved from:

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321866459_Determining_the_Factors_Influencing_
Online_Shopping_Purchase_Intention
Hadi Kiapour, M., Han, X., Lazebnik, S., Berg, A. C., & Berg, T. L. (2015). Where to buy it:
Matching street clothing photos in online shops. In Proceedings of the IEEE international
conference on computer vision (pp. 3343-3351).
Kadaza.ca, (2018). About the Best Online sites of Canada. Retrieved on 08th October 2018.
Retrieved from https://www.kadaza.ca/shopping
Kim, M. J., Chung, N., Lee, C. K., & Preis, M. W. (2015). Motivations and use context in
mobile tourism shopping: Applying contingency and task–technology fit
theories. International Journal of Tourism Research, 17(1), 13-24.
Kooti, F., Lerman, K., Aiello, L. M., Grbovic, M., Djuric, N., & Radosavljevic, V. (2016,
February). Portrait of an online shopper: Understanding and predicting consumer behavior.
In Proceedings of the Ninth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data
Mining (pp. 205-214). ACM.
Newswire.ca, (2018). Walmart Canada announces expansion plans. Retrieved on 08th October
2018. Retrieved from https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/walmart-canada-announces-
expansion-plans-511867571.html
Ortega, J. L. (2015). Disciplinary differences in the use of academic social networking
sites. Online Information Review, 39(4), 520-536.
Stastna, K. (2014). Amazon expansion could be just what Canada's e-commerce sector needs.
Cbc.ca. Retrieved on 08th October 2018. Retrieved from
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/amazon-expansion-could-be-just-what-canada-s-e-
commerce-sector-needs-1.2595939

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Walmart.com, (2018). Get nearby pricing & availability. Retrieved on 05th October 2018.
Retrieved from https://www.walmart.com/
Williams, A. E., & Woodacre, M. A. (2016). The possibilities and perils of academic social
networking sites. Online Information Review, 40(2), 282-294.
Wu, Y. C. J., Shen, J. P., & Chang, C. L. (2015). Electronic service quality of Facebook
social commerce and collaborative learning. Computers in human behavior, 51, 1395-1402.