SMC X Canadian Tire

Overview:

Canadian Tire is a multi-national, publicly-traded corporation. The Canadian Tire business spans many sectors, including retail, ecommerce, automobile service, real estate, and financial services. Smith Marketing Consulting worked directly with the Canadian Tire national ecommerce team in optimizing their owned-brand and micro-season pages. The project was led by director Jack Morse and supported by consultants Ariane Guyonnet, Rishi Goel, Megan Fowler, Jessica McDougall, and Peter DeSantis.

The problem:

Given the rise of ecommerce since 2020, Canadian Tire has witnessed exponential growth in this sector. The share of revenue driven by ecommerce has increased threefold since the beginning of the pandemic. Due to this massive shift in consumer shopping preferences, Canadian Tire is upgrading its ecommerce system to best position the corporation for the future. 

The solution:

Before making the transition, Canadian Tire wanted to engage Smith Marketing Consulting to develop research-based best practices to guide the ecommerce team in day-to-day operations and to redesign six critical web pages based on these principles. Smith Marketing Consulting spent six weeks researching direct, indirect, and industry-leading ecommerce competitors. We cross-examined our findings with recent ecommerce market reports from firms like Boston Consulting Group, among others. Next, SMC began redesigning the six pages using owned brand pages using our research-backed best practices as guiding principles. The owned brand pages we optimized included Paderno, Mastercraft, and Petco. The micro-season pages we optimized included Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Back to School. The SMC team presented to several Canadian Tire ecommerce stakeholders, who were all thrilled with our 10-week engagement. Canadian Tire has already implemented some of the recommendations based on our findings. 

Highlights:

Working with a reputable firm like Canadian Tire is a special experience. The scale of the client means that our work can impact millions. Simply put, it is a great privilege to consult for a multi-billion dollar firm as an undergraduate student.