Canadians save more money ordering books through Amazon.com

In Canada, books are sold at retail with two, or maybe even three prices prin­ted on the cov­er; US and Cana­dian. Often the Cana­dian price is up to 20% higher.

In today’s eco­nom­ic world, the US dol­lar is almost on par with the Cana­dian dol­lar, so this pri­cing mod­el is, from the con­sumers per­spect­ive, flawed. Why would I buy a book in a retail envir­on­ment for 20% more, when I can buy it online, have it delivered to my door, and pay 20% less in the pro­cess? As well, the online retail­ers often dis­count books even more…so your online sav­ings may be more.

In 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 seemed time to update the situation.

So, it seemed prudent to whip up anoth­er spread­sheet, this time in Google Docs, to explore the situation…below is the res­ult. Please for­give the lame lay­out, I’m not a spread­sheet guru, just someone look­ing for answers 🙂

First off, I chose 4 items that I’m some­what inter­ested in. Then, entered the prices and the exchange rate I recor­ded dur­ing the day on Sept. 18th, and then laid it out to include inform­a­tion about the free ship­ping price point. No sense pay­ing for ship­ping if you can get it for nothing.

So here’s the result.

Cana­dian online retail­ers faired quite poorly. Their min­im­um pur­chase for free ship­ping was high­er, and even once the exchange rate was factored in, their dis­coun­ted retail price was high­er than Amazon.com.Also inter­est­ing, if you rank the items in terms of pri­or­ity (top item is must have, next down is second..etc), you’ll have to pur­chase two items from Amazon.com to receive free ship­ping, and two to three items from the Cana­dian online retail­ers. But, your min­im­um pur­chase price to receive free ship­ping increases from between five to 10 dollars!Bottom line, if you’re buy­ing more than a couple of items, and don’t need them instantly (free ship­ping may take a couple of weeks), Amazon.com is the way to go.

Tech­nor­ati Tags: Online Shop­ping, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Chapters.ca, Books, Book Shop­ping, Christ­mas shop­ping, christ­mas, gifts, Brad Gri­er, art­icle, US Dol­lar, Exchange Rate, Cana­dian Dol­lar, CAD, USD, Cross-bor­der shopping