Journal Review #1 http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/back-school-shopping-has-changed-forever-159639 Journal article review No. 1
I chose an article from the Journal http://www.adweek.com. My choice was an article of this journal, entitled " Back-to-School Shopping Has Changed Forever. Nielsen, Retale studies show seasonal shift—and the dominance of digital".
As the title suggests, the article is about a study, which depicts how the shopping behavior of Back-to-School articles has changed over time.
One study was published by Nielsen, “a leading global information and measurement company, (which) provides insights & data about what people watch, listen to & buy”, which goes more into how the customers actions has changed through the influence of advertisement carried out by mass retailers.
The article also adopts on a study done by “location-based shopping platform” Retale that shows the impact of mobile devices on the shopping experience.
Stated in the article, the usual way for doing your Back-to-School shopping for a long time was going to the retailer right before school starts and “fill the cart with the usual haul of spiral notebooks and backpacks”.
This year the consumer started shopping earlier then usual, which is directly related to the mass retailers like Office Depot or Target starting to broadcast their advertising earlier, says Nielsen’s global head of advertiser solutions. As their Study shows, in July 2014 already 18 % of all participants had started shopping, while one year ago in July 2013 only 7% had started.
The behavior of the customer is not only influenced by advertisement but also, as we are living in a digital age, by their mobile devices as over 73% of parents with school-aged kids buy their needed back to school items online and are comparing prices for nearly every item they get, as Retales study displays.
On the one hand this is a very helpful way for the customer to safe money on better deals, but on the other hand the traditional retailer, which can’t compete with the mass retailers, might get into trouble.
Also Nielsen’s data shows, that the items brought by Back-to-school shoppers differ compared to the last years as less of paper and pens are sold. These items are still popular as both are sold to around 65 % of customers, but the sales figures were not as high as in the last years.
To the contrary the sales in laptops and tablets went up with 18 % and 17 % of the respondents buying them this year.
For me the question arises if it actually makes sense to get the new generation of kids more and more used and dependent to electronic devices in School.
In the Last paragraph of the article it is stated that as recent findings show, nearly all students in middle and high schools now have access to mobile devices. I can understand that the use of a Laptop or tablet is helpful in high school, as the material covered in class