This Back-to-School season will top the $18 billion mark, according to the National Retail Federations 2007 Consumer Intentions and Actions Back-to-School survey, conducted by BIGresearch. In fact, sales should amount to $18.4 billion according to the report as families with school-age children are expected to spend $563.49 on BTS merchandise, up 6.9% from last years $527.08 average.
Electronics are supposed to see the largest increase in sales with families spending 13.0% more on electronics than last year ($129.24 vs. $114.38), while Footwear will also see a higher-than-average sales increase, with sales expected to rise 10.3% over last year ($108.42 vs. $98.34).
The timing of back-to-school shopping is expected to be consistent with previous years. The majority of consumers (45.2%) plan to begin their shopping three weeks to one month before school starts. 32% will begin one to two weeks before, 14.6% will begin at least two months before the start of school and 5.4% will wait until the week before school begins. Only 2.7% will procrastinate until after school starts to do their shopping.