Dive Brief:
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Retailers in the U.S. are pairing their back-to-school promotions with philanthropic efforts that boost classroom and other scholastic activities.
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J.C. Penney, for example, is giving the YMCA’s national organization $1 for every pair of Arizona jeans it sells through Sept. 2, up to $250,000, and will host a back-to-school community event at a Los Angeles YMCA, Ad Age reports.
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Target continues its reliance on kids during its turnaround with a back-to-school marketing effort that helps fund student-led classroom projects via the DonorsChoose.org fundraising site. Target has also tapped kids to devise some of its television advertising.
Dive Insight:
As retail sales continue to recover from something of a false start to the year, the back-to-school season is shaping up to be especially critical—and competition is fierce.
The back-to-school season overall will account for 17.2% of full-year retail sales, unchanged from the previous three years according to eMarketer. As a share of total retail during the back-to-school season, e-commerce will rise to 7.9% in 2016, according to the report.
Some 61% of parents plan to increase their back-to-school spending to an average of $917 per child, according to the consumer pulse report from tech-based ad firm the Rubicon Project. 34% of parents with children in kindergarten through grade 12 and 49% of those with college-age kids have already begun shopping, the survey found: Parents with college students on average will spend $1,378 on child’s back-to-school shopping, nearly twice the $684 for K-12 parents.
Most of those dollars these days are going to technology purchases like laptops, and for the first time Amazon, rather than brick-and-mortar, is the number one tech retailer for back-to-school shopping, the Rubicon Project found.
All that is making things that much tougher for retailers dependent on stores and apparel for much of their back-to-school push.
In an era when schools are increasingly under pressure to find outside funding veins to supplement declining public support and rising costs, these retailers’ philanthropic efforts can be a powerful way to attract the attention of beleaguered parents this time of year.
Another example includes, discount department store Kohl’s, which later this month will launch a cash-back coupon campaign to support AdoptAClassroom.org in correlation with its "The School Year Starts Here" back-to-school marketing that began Sunday, according to Ad Age.