Back-to-School Shoppers Heading to Discount Stores, Look for Sales

The down economy is putting a damper on back-to-school shopping this year, and while consumers may look for savings online, they plan to do most of their purchasing in-store.

Data from BIGresearch and the National Retail Federation (NRF) indicates that nearly one-half of US consumers with children ages 6 to 17 will be cutting spending on back-to-school items due to the recession.

With so much emphasis on savings, it is no surprise that nearly three-quarters of consumers plan to shop at discount stores.

Only 22.2% said they would purchase back-to-school items on the Web. Last year, 24.8% of respondents to the same NRF survey indicated they would shop online.

Nearly 15% of respondents said their plans would not change because of the economy. The rest were looking to cut back by shopping for sales more often (56.2%), comparison shopping with both circulars (42.5%) and Websites (26.4%), buying generic products (41.7%) and using coupons more (40.0%).

 

 

Source: eMarketer
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007205