Back-to-school shopping spend is anticipated to surpass $825 million this year. Do you understand how parents and students use mobile and digital to research, plan and purchase education necessities?
Cision’s Caitlin Jamali and Michelle Vangel share findings from our study of social discussion among various shopper personas. Join us to learn how digital affects shopper behaviors and what drives them to make a purchase.
Find out how you can:
-Capture back-to-school shopping wallet share
-Understand purchase motivations based on shopper
personas
-Better drive purchase decisions with relevant messaging and
content
Caitlin
Savers are focused on finding all the best deals and typically shop on a tight budget.
Of the shopping profiles, the Saver has the biggest share of voice. This group coupons, starts shopping early and is not afraid to visit multiple stores to get the lowest price on products. The saver might even pick up items not on their list if a deal is tempting enough.
Michelle
Savers are focused on finding all the best deals and typically shop on a tight budget.
Planners have back to school shopping on their radar starting in June, but may not start shopping until back to school promotions hit stores in July or August.
Caitlin
Students joined the back to school shopping discussion when preparing for college.
Conversations focused on electronics and dorm supplies. Some mentioned buying school supplies for themselves for the first time. Experienced college students offered recommendations to new freshman on what they’ll really need or won’t need in college.
A few female grade-school students joined the back to school conversation to express excitement over new clothes or stylish school supplies, such as a Lily Pulitzer notebook.
Michelle
The convenience shopper is all about efficiency.
This shopper typically has a lot on their hands and needs to complete back to school shopping in the most time effective and simplest manner. A convenience shopper wants to make one trip to one store to complete all back to school supply shopping needs, is more likely to make purchases online. The convenience shopper will take advantage of offers to make life simpler, such as pre-ordering supply kits from through the school that will be automatically delivered to their child on the first day back.
Caitlin SCHOOL SUPPLIES:
Parents are likely to start buying as supplies early as June
Supplies create slightly more social discussion than clothes shopping
Many have a set list for supplies and a planned time-frame for purchases
CLOTHING
Compared to school supplies, parents are more likely to wait until fall to buy new school clothing
Many set a clothing budget for the entire year, which they pull from for new school clothes
Some wait to buy clothes because of wear and tear, growth spurts and prolonged warm weather
Michelle
Caitlin
About 46% of shoppers planned to do some online shopping for back to school, according to survey conducted by the National Retail Federation (NRF). This is consistent with how consumers talk about shopping on social. Approximately 45% of shoppers who talked about where they were going to shop, mentioned shopping online.. Remember, Amazon was one of the top merchants in B2S social buzz.
According to the NRF survey, about 60% of shoppers planned to visit discount stores for some of their back to school shopping. This is in alignment with what we saw in social conversations, the Saver owned the greatest percentage of social buzz. But shoppers want new products: while most are mentioning saving and deal hunting, few are planning on visiting thrift or resale stores for B2S shopping.
Interestingly, Staples was frequently mentioned in social conversations about B2S, but only 39% of surveyed shoppers said they planned to visit office supply stores for B2S shopping.
According to AdWeek, approximately 80% of consumers use their mobile phone to research products. Only 22% use mobile phones to make purchases, consumers are more likely to use their phone to locate a B&M store (25%).
https://nrf.com/resources/consumer-data/back-school-headquarters
http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/what-brands-need-know-about-back-school-shopping-habits-159118
The NRF survey found that B2S shoppers planned to visit stores as follows:
Discount Store: 60%
Department Store: 59%
Clothing Store: 51%
Online: 46%
Office Supplies Store: 39%
Electronics Store: 22%
Drug Store: 17%
Local/Small Business: 16%
Thrift/Resale shop: 12%
Catalog: 6%
Michelle
Blogs were the most popular channel for B2S conversations. Approximately half of bloggers identified as mommy bloggers, who talked about their experiences and strategies for B2S shopping. Many focused on how to accomplish back to school shopping on a budget and offered tips for money savings, such as utilizing coupons and scoping out prices before making a purchasing decision.
35% of Twitter buzz included the hashtag #backtoschool. Posters used Twitter to share deals, and favorite back to school purchases. Twitter posters also participated in B2S sweepstakes.
As expected, mom focused forums were the most active in forum buzz. Cafemom and Babycenter topped the list, followed by deal forums redflagdeals and proboards.
Adweek and Big Commerce B2S reports showed that most moms were using Facebook to research and buy B2S stuff. Our limitations on pulling actual FB data didn’t highlight this in our data set. But I wanted to bring to your attention in case it came up on the call. Not sure if we want to highlight that in the report, or just have it in the back pocket for Q&A.
Adweeek: 51% said they’d use FB to share B2S products and ideas. http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/what-brands-need-know-about-back-school-shopping-habits-159118
Big Commerge: When it comes to social media advertising, be sure to put your effort in where it counts. Among adults ages 30-49, 73% use Facebook, https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/back-to-school-shopping-trends/