The shift to online shopping is dominating consumer trends. The PayPal survey, titled Trends & Spends: PayPal Canada’s 2021 Consumer Shopping Study, found on average Canadians who responded are spending $178 per month shopping online, an increase of $69 compared to pre-pandemic. Across the country, this translates to almost $5.5B in current monthly online spending and an overall increase of over $2B in monthly online spending.
The survey noted a significant jump in online grocery shopping. An initial survey of Canadian consumers in March 2020 found that only 19 per cent engaged in online grocery shopping. In a second survey conducted in April 2020, only 30 per cent of Canadians purchased groceries online. The most recent survey shows that number has jumped to 49 per cent.
Canadian women surveyed are more likely than men to have increased how often they’re shopping online groceries (36 per cent versus men at 26 per cent). By location, Ontarians are the ones who are more likely than others to have increased how often they’re shopping for groceries online (36 per cent compared to 24-30 per cent in other provinces.)
Three in five Canadians (61 per cent) surveyed say they believe that cashless transactions will be part of their typical shopping experience and one in four (28 per cent) say they don’t expect to use cash five years from now at all.
