On November 21st, members from CHPTA and COPA gathered at the Richmond Hill Country Club to hear from three speakers who provided information related to future consumer behaviour.
To start off the day, and returning from last year, was TD Economist Rishi Sondhi who provided a review and future outlook on key aspects of the Canadian economy including GDP growth, interest rates, the job market, household savings, consumer spending, the housing market (home resales as well as building construction), inflation (which is almost back to normal), cooling population growth, outlook on the Canadian dollar and important risk factors to the projections. In addition, Mr. Sondhi discussed some key aspects of the US economy and interesting views on how the new US Trump Administration and its potential policies will impact not only the U.S. but Canada including potential new tariffs, which is all creating a lot of uncertainty. Rishi ended the presentation by taking a number of questions from the audience. We would like to thank Rishi for taking the time to come out to speak to our members once again and the TD Bank for its many years of providing insightful economic information for our membership.
The second speaker of the day was Brian Lamar, Strategic Director of Survey Products at OpenBrand, a new affiliate partner who provides real-time market intelligence and delivers actionable insights and expert analysis for the consumer durables industry including many CHPTA member categories. Brian’s presentation explained who OpenBrand is (recently acquired TraQline) and the type of data that they can provide clients based on their research with consumers in both the US and Canada. They conduct ongoing online surveys with 70,000+ consumers. Brian sampled some data reports for a few housewares, hardware and office products which showed for example, market share changes (by brand & retailer) as well as reasons why consumers buy certain products or choose to shop the stores they do. We thank Brian for travelling up from Louisville, Kentucky to attend the conference and look forward to working further with OpenBrand to provide market intelligence opportunities for our members.
The final speaker for the morning was Michael Scida, Vice President, Retail Business Development at Environics Analytics, who presented important data on immigration and population changes impacting Canada and the different demographics within the country as well as some key retail trends both online and in regards to brick-and-mortar as well as back-to-work trends. The final part of Michael’s presentation delved into some interesting spending data by demographic categories and family size for the Canadian Home Goods & Improvement Market. We would like to thank Michael for his presentation and joining us at the Conference. Michael has also been helping CHPTA with some instruction at our recent Line Review Training Courses in regards to data analytics. His time has been very much appreciated.
We hope attendees enjoyed the networking opportunities and learned a lot about where the economy is headed and consumer trends that could impact the marketplace and their businesses.
