BizAims

By 2006, statistical information about the growth of the Internet and E-commerce has become a very large concern and there are thousands of sources. For the purpose of E-commerce class, we simply want some basic information covering.

The Canadian government has a particularly efficient agency named "Statistics Canada" which tracks a variety of business and economic indicators, including information on e-commers.

This screen capture shows the section on the Statscan website that provides info on Internet Sales.

It should be understood that these figures represent sales figures as reported by Canadian companies in their federal corporate tax returns and is probably a number much lower than the actual figure - especially when you add in internet sales made by non-Canadian companies selling product and services online to Canadians.

Again, another example of why stats are helpful only in a general way sometimes.

From 2000 to 2001 sales increased slowly (14%) as companies began to go online.

From 2001 to 2002 there is a huge jump of 70% as more and more companies participate and each company becomes more effective at selling more online.

The increase from 2002 to 2003 is strong again, but reaches only 68%.

The increase from 2003 to 2004 has backed off to 45% suggesting (and this would be easier to confirm with 2005 figures) that the dot.com boom has peaked and that all of the companies who wanted to sell online, have done so by 2004.

While Internet Sales have been remarkable for their quick rise on some product and service areas, overall, in terms of the total market for selling products and services, internet sales are still a very low percentage of total sales. Statscan said (in April 2005) that "...e-commerce still accounted for less than 1% of total operating revenue for private businesses"