We had a record breaking year last year for back to school sales; with over 800 billion[1] spent in the US, the back-to-school shopping season accounted for 17% of retail sales for the year. That was both plugged and un-plugged[2]. The experts say we are going to spend even more this year. It breaks down like this; we will spend what we did last year plus about 4% more. That is a whole lot of preparation for education.
E-marketer says younger consumers are shopping online and are an expanding their segment more and more. What are they buying?
- Apparel & accessories
- Books
- Music
- Video
- Computers
- Consumer electronics
- Office equipment and supplies
- Toys and hobbies
If we look at our wants verses our needs we could drop: accessories, music, video, toys and hobbies. Then it would just be:
- Clothes
- Books
- Computers/Calculators
- Paper/Pencils
Hum! That would probably reduce spend while covering all the necessities to learn. Has back to school shopping challenged Christmas? Christmas 2016 saw more than an increase of 4%, also over the previous year’s Holiday retail sales during November and December. According to Fortune retail sales weighed $ 658 Billion in 2016. Challenging Christmas YES, beating Christmas spend, nah.
http://fortune.com/2017/01/13/nrf-forecast-holiday/
https://retail.emarketer.com/article/back-to-school-shopping-grow-40-2017/593ef6d6ebd4000b2ceae051
https://nrf.com/resources/consumer-data/holiday-headquarters
Electronics 21.5 billion
Clothing 18.2 billion
Shoe 10.1 Billion
7 out of 10 plan to purchase a brand new book bag
[1] Total of apparel, accessories, books, electronics, office supplies and other back to school related purchases.
[2] (online/offline).