Setting expectations for the longest shopping season of the year.

Introducing the back-to-school retail benchmark series.

Kicking off the back-to-school and off-to-college season.

This time of year serves two audiences – traditional K-12 shoppers and the off-to-college crowd. To find out just how different their school shopping is and uncover trends that will last until the holidays, we’ve taken a look at anonymized U.S. retail data from the Quantum Metric platform and done a bit of third-party consumer research to uncover:

  • How inflation and out-of-stock issues are changing the way we shop
  • The evolving role of mobile as COVID restrictions lift
  • Why consumers are using wishlists to manage their budget
  • What retailers might be missing when it comes to customer rage

 

 

Excerpt from the report:

Rising prices are changing when and how wallets open. 

Findings show 76% of consumers say they are starting their shopping earlier, so that they can identify items they want and wait for them to go on sale. Planning purchases in this way can also grow the average value of their cart. Taking a look at our year-over-year data, we see that average cart values have not only doubled since November, 2021, but actually increased since the holidays.

 

Download the full back-to-school benchmark report to learn more.

Get the benchmark report