I’ve been frustrated recently and not-so-recently with Canadian retailers who feel it’s not worthwhile to put their merchandise online for browsing (like Amazon say). I guess their cost-benefit analysis of taking pictures of their items and then maintaining an e-commerce site falls heavily on the cost side.

I find this terribly inconvenient because I specifically do not want to go out and visit their store to see 1) whether they have an item, or 2) how much it costs. Off the top of my head I can think of HMV, The Bay, Zellers, Holt Renfrew, SportChek, and National that don’t have a full online catalogue. I don’t even need to buy the item online – for example I’d surf the Ikea site looking for stuff, but I would never think about buying online, I’d just go to the store. Is it that expensive to tie their inventory system to the web?