bradgrier.com

How Canadians save money when buying books through Amazon.com

If you’ve ever noticed the pri­cing on the back of a paper­back avail­able in Canada, you’ll notice that there are two prices lis­ted; US and Canadian. With the cur­rent exchange rate (1.064 USD -> CAD) I thought I’d run a quick ana­lys­is on pur­chas­ing four books from Amazon.ca and Amazon.com, and see which would be…

If you’ve ever noticed the pri­cing on the back of a paper­back avail­able in Canada, you’ll notice that there are two prices lis­ted; US and Canadian.

With the cur­rent exchange rate (1.064 USD -> CAD) I thought I’d run a quick ana­lys­is on pur­chas­ing four books from Amazon.ca and Amazon.com, and see which would be the best buy.

                    AMAZON.CA   USD         AMAZON.COM  USD
The Dip             $11.68      $12.39      $10.36      $10.36
Wikinomics          $20.48      $21.72      $17.13      $17.13
Getting Things Done $13.32      $14.12      $16.47      $16.47
Naked Conversations $20.15      $21.37      $16.47      $16.47      Saving (USD)
Totals                          $69.59 		        $60.43      $9.16

As you can see, on those four items, you’d qual­i­fy for free ship­ping, and save $ 9.16 in the process.

Now this meth­od won’t work for everything, as some items Amazon.com sells are duti­able upon entry into Canada.

And, of course, prices fluc­tu­ate fre­quently on these online ser­vices, so your mileage may vary.

But this does stim­u­late some questions…why are Cana­dian book­sellers still selling books at the Cana­dian price as marked on the book? Don’t they real­ize they’ll lose busi­ness by char­ging at this rate? Would­n’t it make more sense for them to be com­pet­it­ive, or are the profit mar­gins so slim that they have to use that price to cov­er their oper­at­ing expenses?

Tech­nor­ati Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Posted

in

, , ,

by

Brad Grier

Tags:

Comments

3 responses to “How Canadians save money when buying books through Amazon.com”

  1. S. Tremblay Avatar
    S. Tremblay

    I am guess­ing that there are Cana­dian laws that would pre­vent them to do so. Plus they prob­ably buy them at a marked down price from the CDN price so to make their mark they have to charge the CDN price. I’m sure it does­n’t make them happy. They’d rather sell at the lower price if they could.

    Reply
  2. Brad Grier Avatar
    Brad Grier

    Not sure about the laws, but yeah, you’re likely right. They ordered the books months ago, at a spe­cif­ic price factor­ing in a spe­cif­ic profit margin.

    Now the value of the dol­lar has changed, the prin­ted price on the back of the book has­n’t and if they choose to com­pete against the USD price, they have to sell the book at a lower price, redu­cing profit.

    Reply
  3. Canadians save more money ordering books through Amazon.com at blog.bradgrier.net

    […] June, when the exchange rate was 1.064 USD -> CAD, I pos­ted “How Cana­dians save money when buy­ing books through Amazon.com. Now, with the rate being close to par, and many start­ing to think about Christ­mas shop­ping, it […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.