Deloitte: Higher Prices at Checkout For Back To School Shoppers

By Rob Starr, Content Manager, Big4.com

Nearly 9 in 10 (88 percent) consumers surveyed plan to spend the same or more on back-to-school shopping this year, with higher prices a contributing factor for some families. Among those who plan to spend more this year (34 percent), nearly 6 in 10 (58 percent) cite higher prices as their reason for doing so and more than one-third (34 percent) say their children need more expensive items than last year.

According to Deloitte’s annual “Back-to-School” survey, released recently, Consumers’ days of cutting back-to-school spending are behind them, and shoppers are reverting to more traditional information sources to study up before heading to the store.

Television ranks as the No.1 source for parents to hear about the items they intend to purchase, cited by 41 percent of respondents, followed by family members (37 percent), newspapers (37 percent) and friends (36 percent).  Among factors influencing children’s purchases, 59 percent of parents claim friends to be the top source of information, followed by television (41 percent).

The survey shows that smartphones and online channels will guide bargain-hungry shoppers again this year. More than 4 in 10 (43 percent) smartphone owners indicate they use their devices at least half the time for back-to-school shopping. Price-checking tops shoppers’ lists, cited by 62 percent of smartphone owners who will use their devices for back-to-school shopping. Nearly half (45 percent) of those smartphone shoppers will download discounts, coupons and sale information.

The survey was commissioned by Deloitte and conducted online by an independent research company between July 5 and 12, 2012. The survey polled 1,134 parents of school-age children in grades K – 12, and has a margin of error for the entire sample of plus or minus three percentage points.