Consumer spending on kids and young adults returning to the classroom not only is the second-largest shopping period behind the winter holidays, but it’s one when many conventional physical stores are holding their own against the surge of online competition.
Although the growth of e-commerce has forced dozens of U.S. retail chains to close thousands of locations at malls and elsewhere, analysts said that children and their parents still like visiting stores to purchase items on their back-to-school lists — notebooks and lunch boxes and clothes and computers.
“This is one category where we’re seeing a surprising level of support for the in-store experience,” said Jim Mills, who heads the Southern California consumer business practice for Deloitte, the consulting and auditing firm.
Back-to-school shoppers plan to do most of their buying in physical stores, according to a survey conducted for the National Retail Federation by Prosper Insights & Analytics.
