The adoption of social commerce—the ability to shop and buy, directly or indirectly, via social media platforms—accelerated during the pandemic. The vast majority of social commerce today is within the discovery and consideration stages. However, checkout capabilities are not available from the leading social networks in Canada.
Social distancing led to increased retail ecommerce sales worldwide in 2020. In Canada, such sales grew 20.7% last year. And social commerce activity also increased accordingly. We estimate there will be 7.9 million social buyers in Canada this year, almost a quarter of the population ages 14 and older, up from 6.9 million last year. These buyers mainly make purchases by following links to retailer sites from social networks.
According to Shopify’s September 2020 polling, 22% of social commerce buyers in Canada ages 18 to 34 said they had made a purchase via social media in the previous six months. By comparison, 11% of 35- to 54-year-olds did so, as well as just 6% those 55 and older.