Dollarama Trends 2024-2025: opportunities for Quebec SMEs
Dollarama’s meteoric growth in Canada, and particularly in Quebec, is not just a stock market curiosity. It reveals profound trends in consumer behavior, the pressure on purchasing power and the evolution of sales channels. For a Quebec SME, understanding these Dollarama 2024-2025 trends is a strategic opportunity: adjust its price positioning, review its offer, accelerate its digital transformation and take advantage ofartificial intelligence to stay competitive.
While inflation remains a major concern, low-cost retailers like Dollarama are enjoying record footfall. According to recent financial results, the company continues to increase its comparable sales and open new stores across the country, while accelerating its digital shift. For entrepreneurs and SME managers in Quebec, these signals are clear: your customers are becoming more price-sensitive, more pragmatic, but also more demanding when it comes to the shopping experience, whether in-store or online.
In this article, we analyze recent key figures related to Dollarama, consumer behaviors in 2024-2025 and, above all, concrete opportunities for Quebec SMEs in website creation, e-commerce, CRM and AI-powered automation. The aim: to turn competitive pressure into strategic advantage.
1. What Dollarama’s growth reveals about the Quebec consumer
Dollarama’s continued success is no accident: it reflects underlying trends in Quebecers’ shopping habits. According to Dollarama’s most recent 2024 results, the company recorded continued growth in comparable sales, supported by increased foot traffic and a rise in the number of higher-priced products (up to $5). At the same time, consumer studies show that Canadians are turning more to discount retailers to offset inflation and the rising cost of living.
According to RBC’s 2024 Cost of Living Survey, nearly 60% of Canadians say they have changed their food and everyday goods shopping habits to reduce their spending, by favouring discounts, private labels and low-price stores(RBC, 2024). This dynamic directly benefits chains like Dollarama, but has direct impacts on all local businesses:
- Consumers are more likely to compare prices online before making a purchase.
- Sensitivity to value for money is stronger than ever.
- Average baskets are becoming fragmented, with some customers buying from discount retailers and others from specialists or local shops.
For Quebec SMEs, this means two essential things:
- You can no longer ignore the notion of “perceived value”. Even if you’re not in the low-price business, the customer needs to clearly understand why they’re paying more: quality, service, expertise, proximity, personalization, local impact.
- Your digital presence must reflect this value. A poorly structured site, with no clear information on the advantages of your offer, immediately puts you at a disadvantage compared with highly optimized giants.
So it’s becoming strategic for companies to strengthen their brand image and digital showcase. A professional site, well positioned on Google and designed to convert, is now a minimum. If this isn’t already the case for your company, it may be time to rethink your online presence with a team specialized in website creation adapted to the Quebec market.
2. Price pressure: how SMEs can differentiate themselves beyond the “all for $1” approach
One of the main effects of Dollarama’s rise for SMEs is price pressure. Many entrepreneurs feel they can’t compete. Yet fighting on price alone is rarely a winning strategy against players of this size.
Recent consumer data shows that, even under budgetary pressure, customers are still willing to pay more for :
- Local or made-in-Quebec products;
- Longer life or superior quality;
- Responsive, human customer service;
- A seamless shopping experience (online or in-store);
- Clear corporate values (ecology, social responsibility, etc.).
A 2024 Deloitte study on Canadian retailing points out that customer experience and personalization are becoming as important differentiation levers as price itself, particularly for middle- and upper-income customer segments(Deloitte, 2024).
For a Quebec SME, this opens up a number of concrete possibilities:
- Reinforce your local storytelling: highlight Quebec origins, short circuits, craftsmanship or responsible manufacturing. Your website, product sheets and social networks must tell this story consistently.
- Structure your customer database with a CRM: a CRM adapted to SMEs enables you to better segment your customer base, send targeted offers and retain the right customers, rather than just chasing volume.
- Set up smart loyalty programs: even if you can’t always offer the lowest price, you can offer exclusive benefits, priority service and bonuses for regular customers.
In other words, where Dollarama wins on price, Quebec SMEs can win on relationships, proximity, trust and quality. But for this to work, these advantages must be visible and tangible, particularly via your digital platforms and communications.
3. The rise of e-commerce and digital technology: transforming the threat into a growth channel
While Dollarama has long focused on physical commerce, the 2024-2025 trend is towards channel hybridization. The behavior of Quebec consumers is clear: they want to be able to search online, compare and then decide whether to buy online or in-store, depending on their needs at the time.
According to Statistics Canada, retail e-commerce sales in Canada have continued to grow since the pandemic, and now represent a stable but significant share of overall sales. Consumers expect even small shops to offer :
- A clear, fast and mobile-friendly website;
- A possibility to order online or at least to see prices and availability;
- A simple order/payment or appointment system;
- Up-to-date information on opening hours, services and location.
This is precisely where a huge opportunity lies for Quebec SMEs: where giants like Dollarama will take time to build and optimize a robust e-commerce offering, you can be much more agile. By working with a team specialized in online stores, you can :
- Launch a complete e-commerce site adapted to the Quebec market (primarily French, with bilingual options as required);
- Integrate local delivery solutions or in-store pick-up (click & collect);
- Connect your store to a CRM to track orders, preferences and purchase history;
- Centralize your inventory between the physical store and the online store.
At the same time, SMEs can capitalize on technologies that the giants are adopting more slowly:
- Chatbots and AI for customer service: a virtual assistant powered by artificial intelligence can answer frequently asked questions (prices, availability, return policies) 24/7, improving the customer experience and reducing pressure on your teams.
- Marketing automation: automated email scenarios (cart abandonment, targeted promotions, inactive customer follow-ups) to maximize every visit to your site.
- Advanced analytics: track in real time which pages are performing well, which products are selling best and which channels are bringing in the best customers.
The key is to see digital transformation not as a cost, but as a direct response to new expectations shaped, among other things, by the rise of chains like Dollarama and consumers’ habit of having everything at their fingertips.
4. AI, data and CRM: arming your SME to compete with the big retailers
Large retailers like Dollarama have entire teams dedicated to data analysis, inventory optimization and marketing. The good news for Quebec SMEs is that tools previously reserved for large corporations are now accessible, simple to use and affordable.
Artificial intelligence and modern CRM solutions can make up much of this lost ground, provided they are properly supported. In concrete terms, today’s SMEs can :
- Centralize all your contacts and customers in a CRM: every interaction (call, e-mail, purchase, website visit) is recorded to better understand your customers’ needs and habits.
- Segment your customer base: by region, purchase history, average basket, preferences, etc. This enables you to send the right message, to the right person, at the right time.
- Automate repetitive tasks: prospecting follow-up, quotation reminders, appointment reminder, order confirmation.
- Use AI to improve the customer experience: product recommendations, automated responses, sentiment analysis in customer reviews.
For example, a Quebec-based online retailer can use an AI chatbot to help visitors quickly find the right product based on their budget, intended use and location. Such a system replicates, at lower cost, the level of service that the big players are trying to deploy on a large scale.
By working with a specialized agency like Nuaweb, you can seamlessly integrate these technological building blocks: a professional website, an optimized online store, a robust CRM and artificial intelligence solutions tailored to your SME reality.
This integration creates a very tangible competitive advantage over the major chains:
- You know your customers better than any anonymous giant.
- You can react faster to changes in the local market.
- You offer a personalized experience, backed by real data.
In an environment where the Dollarama model is on the rise, the combination of “local proximity + intelligent technology” is probably becoming one of the best defenses and, above all, an engine of sustainable growth for Quebec SMEs.
Conclusion: capitalize on Dollarama trends to accelerate your transformation
Dollarama trends 2024-2025 are a strong signal: Quebec consumers are looking for competitive prices, but also clarity, simplicity and a seamless shopping experience. Rather than face competition from the low-price giants, Quebec SMEs can turn this reality into an opportunity.
By focusing on :
- A professional web presence that enhances your differentiation;
- Agile e-commerce, designed for your local customers and connected to your operations;
- A well-structured CRM to better understand, segment and retain your customers;
- Artificial intelligence solutions to automate, personalize and enhance the customer experience;
… you can not only withstand price pressure, but also create more value, more margin and more loyalty than is possible with “all-at-a-discount” models.
If you are an executive or marketing manager of a Quebec-based SME and would like to :
- Adapt your digital strategy to new consumer habits;
- Launch or optimize a high-performance online store;
- Implement CRM and intelligent automation;
- Explore the potential of AI (chatbots, recommendations, automation);
Nuaweb can support you from A to Z, with a concrete approach tailored to the realities of local SMEs. Book a free consultation today to discuss your objectives, challenges and possible solutions.
