New Report Preps Brands for Back-to-School Season
Summer vacation might be just around the corner, but marketers are already planning for the 2022-23 back-to-school season. As students, parents and teachers get ready to resume their school-year routines, the period from mid-July to mid-September presents a key opportunity for brands to reconnect with consumers and navigate the unique challenges of inflation, supply chain and transformed shopping behavior.
Our new back-to-school report features data-driven insights to help brands study up for a successful season. Inside, you’ll learn details about the Gen Z and Gen Alpha student cohorts, discover category trends and sales lifts, and see how Purell® executed a top-of-class omnichannel campaign. Download our 2022 Back-to-School Yearbook today and keep reading for some of the major takeaways.
The Gen Z and Gen Alpha Agenda
Understanding your audience is a crucial part of any brand’s strategy. Not that long ago, brands had to appeal to the parents of students during the back-to-school season. But now, buying power is shifting to younger generations, who are comfortable interacting with brands online and have their own set of opinions, standards and expectations.
As discussed in our Gen Z eBook and supported by a McKinsey study, Generation Z tends to mobilize around companies they truly believe in and will stop purchasing brands they perceive as macho, racist or homophobic. Gen Alpha is also a cause-driven group and considers sustainability to be a top priority.
Beyond their strong ethical beliefs, Gen Z and Gen Alpha have expectations for customer service. Having grown up in an era of optimized delivery services, Gen Z and Alpha expect deliveries to take 2.21 days on average—25% faster than older generations’ expectations. Additionally, one in five under-16-year-olds surveyed said they would never order from a service that couldn’t deliver the next day.
Back-to-School Seasonal Sales Lifts
It’s more than just traditional school supplies that experience sales lifts leading up to the first bell. Consumers stock up on products across categories to properly prepare and set students up for success.
Beverages such as isotonic beverages—great for P.E. class and after-school sports—experience a 64% sales lift from mid-August to mid-September. Milk and cereal bars rise in sales 66% during back-to-school season thanks to their convenience on busy mornings. Household products get a bump in sales as parents seek to create a clean and nurturing environment for their children; health and beauty products like hand sanitizer, which rose 76% during the period last year, experience sales lifts as hygiene becomes top of mind for students, parents and teachers alike.
Take a deeper dive into the trends and top-of-class solutions to ace your brand’s back-to-school campaign this year. Get started by downloading our Back-to-School Yearbook here.
