Mike Colledge, VP, Canadian Public Affairs, IPSOS, talked on how Canada is changing, including demographically, technologically and how those are affecting brick and mortar.
Canada is getting older. The average life span is going up and birth rates are going down. This means that purchase decisions will be changing. Canada is also become more diverse.
anada is no longer a homogenous society, which creates the need for more diverse marketing campaigns. Canada is also becoming a more urban nation.
CanadaNext is a study that IPSOS completed with various partners including IBM, Global News and the Munk School of Global Affairs (U of T). The study asks Canadians to evaluate 50 future scenarios (like the impact of AI and changes in brick and mortar and how they think it will affect them in the future.
The results were that men, particularly millennial men, are more receptive to new technology. This will have an impact as women are more likely than men to see job loss and less likely to see job gains from new technology. Gen X and Boomer women also report having a harder time keeping up with technology.
Canadians also feel like the benefits of technology will be unevenly distributed with winners being big business, the rich and the young, while older, lower income and immigrants are being left behind.
The effects of the technological revolution will result in massive changes to retail. Many Canadians believe that most business interactions will be increasingly cashless and that online will kill brick and mortar.
Obviously, the widescale change could have a big impact on lotteries. With more older Canadians with more cash, lotteries could see an immediate boon. However, younger Canadians will drive change, particularly with the decline of brick and mortar and cashless commerce.