Illustration by Beck Deresse
Earlier this month, I tried to quit the aptly (if ominously) named “Everything Store.” But before my Amazon AMZN-Q boycott truly hit the ground, there were a few false starts – three, to be exact.
The first attempt was scrapped before ever taking off. A friend’s baby shower registry was in part (the more budget-friendly part) linked to the e-commerce platform.
The second time, I was several days into my boycott before it hit me that I’d been occasionally hitting play on Audible, an Amazon app, likely while trudging up to Loblaws to buy vitamins and detergent pods to avoid purchasing them online.
The third blunder was a coffee pod-related relapse.
When I finally kickstarted the two-week embargo, I knew it would be tricky to forgo the almost unsettling ease of shopping on the Amazon app. But I had no idea just how far Amazon’s tentacles reached into everyday life.
Depending on the time of year, my reliance on the e-commerce giant ranges from non-existent to finding a package I have no memory of ordering at my doorstep (I’m looking at you, DALSTONE solid color square shape collapsible multifunctional mobile phone grip and kickstand).
But cutting off shopping on the app, not to mention streaming movies and shows via Amazon Prime or using any of its innumerable services and products, was my attempt to follow in the footsteps of the countless Canadians choosing to pull back their dollars from the American giant amid the trade war with our not-so-neighbourly southern neighbours.
A poll released in March by public opinion research firm Leger Marketing showed that two-thirds of Canadians surveyed bought fewer American items from stores in the previous weeks, with 55 per cent ordering less from Amazon.
The Big Guide to Canadian Shopping
Yet shopping on the app is just the tip of the iceberg. Online retail represents a minority of Amazon’s operating income, according to 2024 figures.
Instead, much of the business revenue comes from digital ad spots on its website and streaming platforms, including Prime and Twitch, a popular live-streaming portal for gamers. And the company’s real moneymaker: Amazon Web Services.
Accounting for nearly 60 per cent of Amazon’s operating profit in 2024, AWS provides hosting and digital infrastructure to thousands of sites we visit every day.
To be clear: I was prepared to stop watching the questionable selection of movies on the platform’s streaming portal, Amazon Prime Video, of which I already did little. But I was irked when my partner reminded me that Netflix uses AWS just as I settled down to watch the documentary Chaos.
If you doubt how inescapable Amazon is, here is just a sliver of the companies that rely on its digital services: Airbnb, Starbucks, PayPal, Reddit, Coca-Cola, Formula 1, Heineken, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, Disney+, CBC and, yes, even The Globe and Mail.
The federal government and the government of Ontario use AWS, too, as do 6,500 government, education, nonprofit and health care organizations.
It’s safe to say I tweaked my strategy. My full-fledged embargo turned into Amazon Boycott Lite: no shopping on the platform.
Things started off easy enough. For days, my urge to shop on Amazon was non-existent.
But around day five, I began running low on my go-to vitamins. A bottle of 90 Omega 3 gummies from Canadian brand Webber Naturals would usually set me back about $19.99 (Amazon would also lure me in with a 5-per-cent off coupon).
Customers shop for groceries at the Real Canadian Superstore in Toronto, on March 3.Katherine KY Cheng/Getty Images
I walked 15 minutes to my local Shoppers Drug Mart (without Audible this time), where the same bottle was $24.49 or $24.99 for a comparable product from Jamieson, also a Canadian brand. On Amazon, the product sold for $15.19 – nearly 40 per cent less.
To be fair, not all price differences between Amazon and local retailers were as jarring. A bottle of Jamieson 500-milligram Vitamin C chewables was $8.27 on Amazon and a measly 12 cents more at Shoppers. Factor in my monthly $9 Amazon Prime fee, and Shoppers was by all accounts cheaper.
Then I ran out of detergent pods. A 112-pack was about $28 on Amazon (26 cents per pod). Additionally, an “Open Box” option, which allows customers to buy unused items others have returned, went for $22.38.
At Loblaws, it was $37.99, or 34 cents per pod. And No Frills had it for $33.99, had I made the trek.
The next challenge cropped up when I fell behind on a book-club novel. My local library did not have a copy of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, that month’s harrowing pick.
While I’d usually turn to Amazon – books being its original specialty – I began scouring Book City and Indigo, ultimately purchasing a paperback copy for about 15 bucks.
On Amazon, that would have been about $11.
The made-in-Canada tools that are helping make ‘buy Canadian’ more convenient
The few other hurdles that cropped up involved coffee, face soap and a cutting board, which sent me to Winners. I can’t say I didn’t miss the convenience of tapping a button and finding a brown package at my door the next day, as opposed to taking a chance on the hodgepodge of stuff the off-price retailer carries at any given time.
But I enjoyed the excuse to explore local stores that popped up near my apartment while I’d been too busy scrolling. Unfortunately, I lost about an extra hour or two per week on these trips.
For some, the time-savings Amazon provides isn’t merely a convenience, it’s a game-changer.
My sister, a new mom, shared that Amazon helped her immensely in the initial months after her baby was born. She set up recurring diaper and baby wipe deliveries, and the app provided speedy help to cope with the curveballs of new motherhood, like medication for a sick baby.
As for myself, the boycott made me more intentional about what I buy – if only because I had to get off the couch and travel to do it. And despite some individual purchases being pricier, I saved money by avoiding the items enticing me through the sheer convenience of getting them at the click of a button.
Of course, for many people these days, the boycott isn’t about savings at all.
“It’s a matter of principle,” said Shelsey Jarvis from British Columbia, who stopped shopping on Amazon a month ago. She didn’t want to support the tech giant, whose executive chairman, Jeff Bezos, has cozied up to the U.S. President waging a trade war on Canada.
“The trade war was a factor initially,” she said via e-mail. “As tensions grow, it’s become a way to fight for our sovereignty and keep our money in Canada – we’re in a war and I see this as the very least I can do to help the fight.”
And perhaps the fight isn’t all that futile.
Daniel Clark, an associate professor of entrepreneurship at Ivey Business School, says Canadians are U.S. brands’ biggest customers on a per-person basis, spending an average of $8,500 a year on U.S. goods.
But digital content and subscriptions are an area where Canadians could have an outsized impact, particularly on companies such as Amazon, Netflix and Apple.
“The purchase of their digital content is a far more profitable enterprise for Amazon than any marginal purchase that you make on their online store,” Prof. Clark said.
In other words, the convenience of watching the latest Prime show or keeping photos in the AWS cloud are the continual subscriptions that power Amazon’s revenue and keep us hooked – even if we’re giving up buying toilet paper or vitamins from its online store.
At the end of my two weeks, I didn’t brush off the digital dust and reopen the Amazon app when the experiment ended. I kept it of sight, out of mind.
But I can’t promise I won’t pull it out occasionally for those last-minute birthday invites or baby showers, or after a wooden cutting board is mistakenly placed in the dishwasher or when drywall spackling is urgently needed to repair a dent before the landlord drops by. And I can’t promise I won’t continue to use any of the countless digital services powered by the American giant. Can you?