Back To School
In-store shopping comes out the winner
Back-to-school (B2S) season is the second-biggest shopping season of the year. Deloitte’s 11th annual survey took a closer look at shopping trends for this B2S season, as 29 million households across the U.S. are planning to spend a total of $27.6 billion. Consumers are planning to spend more than double offline compared to online.
The average of 1,200 households surveyed plans to spend $510 this year, up from $501 in 2017, with 57% of the spending planned to take place in-store, 23% online, and 20% of the spend remaining undecided between online and in-store. The survey results show the plateauing of digital influence as indicated by flattened usage of laptops, mobile, and social. Customers are mainly using their devices to access websites, look for prices, and collect coupons and discounts—instead of actually making purchases. Top spending categories include clothing, supplies, computers and hardware, and electronic gadgets, with children in grades K-12 likely to influence over $21 billion in spending, representing 75% of total spend.
Another annual survey released by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights and Analytics projected the total spending this year for K-12 schools and college combined to reach $82.8 billion.