The second half of every year brings two major events that the retail world eagerly awaits for. One is back-to school, and the other is the holiday season.
However, it’s been a different story this year.
With schools still closed and not sure of when to be reopened, the US retail industry has adopted a flexible approach with almost all of the retailers extending the back-to school season.
At a time when one isn’t sure how education is going to be managed and when children are going to return to classes, shoppers in the US are delaying the back-to-school purchases.
The US retail industry is closely looking at back-to-school spending, which is being pushed back now. And understandably so!
Target, American retail giant, said last week that it was not sure if 60 per cent of students who are to start school remotely will be welcomed back to a classroom in September or October.
Substantiating further, Brian Cornell, CEO, Target, said “Many of those students may have to wait till January 2021. So we have made the decision to be flexible. And we’ll extend the season and extend our assortment because we know at some point in time that those students will need backpacks and uniforms.”
Apparel Resources too had explored in detail in one of its articles how bad the back-to-school season has been hit this year – contrary to what was anticipated.
Also Read: The state of Back-to-School shopping amidst COVID-19
Reportedly, the expenditure is now estimated to be down by 7.5 to 9.5 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) with lot of uncertainties.
And these uncertainties were very well seen in the intra-season shifts in spending intentions that were recorded in a survey conducted by Coresight early this month.
In fact, one of the highlights of the survey was that large percentage shoppers expect to spend less on in-school learning products now than they did last year – 30 per cent in August 2020, compared to 19.9 per cent back in July 2020.
The Coresight survey also showed that the percentage of consumers that expect to spend more on products for learning at home than they did in 2019 dropped to 21.5 per cent in August from 27.3 per cent in July. However, learn-at-home categories are believed to still do well this year.
Right now there’s more demand for laptops and tablets than school uniforms, as Walmart recently reported, but trends could change later.
The back-to-school will come but later than normal. However, holiday season may come early.
In another survey conducted by Coresight, 22.7 per cent consumers intend to start holiday shopping earlier this time, while only a mere 7.6 may start a bit later.
One-third of holiday shoppers plan to shop on Amazon Prime Day (rescheduled for October 2020), as per the survey, while one quarter hopes to shop on Cyber Monday (30 November). Another 16 per cent expressed its intent to buy on Black Friday.
Retailers are now geared up for this consumer shift!
Jill Timm, CFO, Kohl’s, said “We expect the holiday season to move earlier” and pointed to the advantages of such a shift in relaxing the costs associated with shipping over the peak period.
Brian Cornell of Target, earlier last week, commented that it is also all set to begin earlier than before in the October period.
The impressive sales, of late, have forced many retail experts believe that the coming holiday season will be solid, though in some categories restricted inventory and compressed logistics may prove to be important inhibitors to total growth.
It will be interesting to see how the coming months turn out be for the American retail sector.
Watch this space to know what’s next!
