LEARNING CURVE

Cost, convenience major factors in annual back-to-school shopping survey

PLYMOUTH >> The back-toschool shopping season is right behind the Christmas shopping frenzy in more ways than one, and consulting firm Deloitte is right there for both occasions, analyzing every last detail of shoppers’ buying habits.

“When it comes to backto-school shopping, price and convenience are the two biggest factors in terms of what people are looking for,” noted Deloitte’s Philadelphia retail specialist Bill Park. “People want it cheap and they don’t want to spend a lot of time doing it.”

Although overall, “it’s a pretty sober outlook for back-to-school shopping, both nationally and in the Philadelphia marketplace,” total back-to-school spending is expected to reach more than $27.8 billion, Park pointed out.

With price tags being the predominant influence on spending,Deloitte found that discount prices (57 percent) and competitive prices were the main aspects driving purchase decisions.

Mass merchants such as Target and Walmart hung onto their spot as this year’s top shopping location that 88 percent of shoppers planned to patronize.

“Where people are shopping when they do the actual locations, the mass merchant is still number one, and that’s been number one for a while,” Park

said. “People are really price conscious, in Philadelphia, even more so probably than nationally. And in the Philadelphia marketplace we saw a pretty dramatic increase in people’s desire to shop at specialty retailers like Urban Outfitter and The Gap. When they’re trying to find something unique they may not be able to find that at a mass merchant, they can maybe get something different at the specialty. So I thought that was a pretty significant finding in the Philadelphia marketplace this year, a very significant spike in specialty retailers, something where the customer thinks they’ll find something unique. If that’s what they’re interested in they’re probably not going to go to Target or Walmart.”

Deloitte reported that 62 percent of shoppers are likely to start shopping about six to eight weeks before school starts.

The electronic gadgets category is expected to grow by $800 million, while, perhaps surprisingly, the computers and hardware category is expected to decline by $600 million, Park allowed.

“As far as spending, there really isn’t anything new in terms of technology that people have gravitated towards. There’s nothing really exciting out there in the electronic gadgetry that’s a must-have so they’re really comfortable keeping what they have and maybe getting another year out of it,” he explained. “And in Philadelphia it’s a little bit higher than nationally in terms of people’s ability not to spend money on electronics this year. We (characterized) the Philadelphia shopper as being more price conscious than nationally as well, so I think goes in line with what they want to spend their money on. You have to have clothing and school supplies but you don’t necessarily have to go out and get a new computer or gadget this year. The number one spending is still clothing, and that’s pretty robust.”

When Philadelphia area shoppers are in the market for electronics they are more likely to shop at electronics stores than national shoppers.

Households planned to spend 55 percent of their budget in-store and 26 percent online, with the remaining up for grabs; online has grown from 24 percent to 26 percent since 2018, Park said,

“Clearly, people are still interested in going to stores. When we did the survey, 55 percent said they were shopping at stores,” noted Park, who added that mobile use is expected remain flat this year at 57 percent, while laptops and social media are expected to decline.

“We’ve seen this trend over the last few years that the use of mobile for retailing is still very significant but beginning to plateau in the usage of mobile technology for shopping,” he said. “But were seeing an uptick of moile device usage for research and finding stores and that type of thing. But many times they’re not buying on the devices, they’re buying on the computer. Internet is very important but we’re seeing a plateau in the use of devices.”

Newer tech (e.g., voice assisted, digital reality) has yet to gain any traction at all, Park noted.

This annual Deloitte survey was conducted online using an independent research panel between May 31 and June 6, 2019. Nationally, the survey polled a sample of 1,200 parents of school-aged children. All respondents had at least one child attending school in grades K through 12 this fall.

For the Greater Philadelphia segment, 400 parents of school age children belonging to the Philadelphia Metropolitan Statistical Area were polled.

ANDREW STETTLER Shoppers look for back-to-school supplies at the Metroplex Target in Plymouth Meeting.

MEDIANEWS GROUP FILE PHOTO Mass merchants such as Target and Walmart hung onto their spot as this year’s top shopping location that 88 percent of shoppers planned to patronize.