I once read that 90% of Canadians live within a 2 hour drive to the US (or something like that). Target is just the latest American company with a failed attempt to make it in the Canadian market. Many people mentioned the fact that their US Target experience was very different from visiting a store in Canada. I know people who preferred the 2 hour drive to Buffalo every few months to enjoy the US Target experience and the US prices rather than shop at their local Canadian Target store.
The same experience is not possible for a number of reasons, one being bi-lingual labeling requirements. Some merchandise has to be re-packaged or re-labeled. You can see that on food items, when the ingredients list in French is pasted on top of the English nutritional information. Let’s face it, the US has more variety in everything. We probably do not need another flavor in potato chips, but the Americans have it.
American companies often do not make the effort. There are about 35 million Canadians. We are like California that way, only colder. We have French/English and we have Quebec. Quebec can be a bit of an IT headache. Which begs the question, should US companies make the effort to have a Canadian presence? Is it worth it? They already get revenue from Canadians who go on shopping trips to the US and from internet users.
My favorite US ‘store’ is Amazon. It has a .com and a .ca version. When looking for a book, I always use .com. .com has the reviews and real estimates about delivery time. Then I go to .ca to see if I can get it faster (1 or 2 day delivery) and avoid the shipping charges. More often than not, the listed delivery time from .ca is longer than from .com. So my options as a Canadian are: order from .ca, wait and hope for the best, or order from .com, pay a little more and get the item in a few days. There is no reason why an item that is available in the US now, needs 4 weeks to make it to Toronto other than systems that do not talk to each other, also referred to as supply chain problem. In the last few years Amazon has not seen it fit to address this issue. They do not have to, since many Canadians, including myself will still order from .com. It’s a like paying an extra tax for living above the 45th parallel.
With more and more goods available on the internet and more people using the internet to purchase goods, can Canada support more big box stores? Companies need web sites that people like, products that people want, product reviews and the ability to deliver within a short period of time. A good idea to have warehouses in major Canadian cities, owned or 3rd party.
Visiting brick and mortar stores for many goods has changed from a necessity to something people enjoy, prefer and need or want right now. Unless a company has products that people want to actually see, touch or try on before they buy them, a physical Canadian presence may not be necessary if you have a good distribution system and internet support.