It happens every year. Back to School is one of the most heavily marketed

shopping seasons, with many stores slashing prices to clear out as much of

their stock as possible. The usual suspects of school supplies and clothing

are heavily discounted as students and their parents shop for the upcoming

school year. But this year, things were a little different. In looking at

Amazon’s latest data, we’ve identified a few distinct trends that shed some

light on what’s driving the back-to-school season and how it is changing.

Promotions Drive the Back-to-School Season OnlineBy Jeff Brown, Director of Client Services at One Click Retail

Last week, we analyzed Amazon’s top 5 product groups for the month of August and found that back-to-school items were performing much better than in previous years. This week, we take a closer look at those products in particular, specifically the “Apparel” and “Office Products” groups, to see what trends are emerging.

Although the back-to-school season can sometimes be considered to run from mid-July to mid-September, for the purpose of this article we are looking specifically at August. Our period runs from July 31st to August 27th and we’ll be looking at both Year-over-Year (YoY) figures as well as the “lift” caused by the season, which is compared to the period running from June 5th to July 2nd, so that the numbers are not skewed by Amazon Prime Day (July 12).

A note on the period:

A continuing trend this year is the increased digitization of the public, including

students and children. As personal computers, tablets and smartphones become

increasingly integrated into everyday life, they are increasingly becoming part of

the back-to-school market. More and more, retailers and manufacturers are

pricing traditional “analog” school supplies (like notebooks and pencils) at a very

steep discount, using them as loss leaders to entice shoppers to purchase their

more expensive electronics from them at the same time.

Trend #1: Analog gives way to digital

As one of the busiest annual shopping seasons, consumers wary of crowds,

lines and overall chaos are increasingly going online. Amazon experienced a YoY

growth of over $25 million this year in back-to-school sales alone, an increase of

more than 20%. With Office Organization category items being the main driver,

accounting for more than $5 million alone, Amazon is demonstrating that it can

successfully compete in a broad spectrum of categories not typically associated

with e-commerce. Consumers are becoming more and more comfortable with

buying just about anything online.

Trend #2: Back-to-school goes online

The most striking trend is just how completely promotions have driven sales

in Amazon’s 2016 back-to-school season. The leading category, Office

Organization, contained 48 unique promotions with an average discount of

18%, while Writing Instruments and Accessories contained over 500

promotions. Although the majority of the promos were “buy X get Y” deals,

Paper Mate, which alone offered 270 promos, received a 180% lift with clip

coupons worth less than one dollar.

Trend #3: Promotions drive sales

The best selling item on Amazon during the 2016 back to school season

was a black TI-84 Plus Graphics Calculator from Texas Instruments, with

nearly $4 million worth sold in these four weeks (the 4th week was

driven by a Gold Box deal). The Calculator category as a whole

experienced a lift of almost 500%, second only to uniforms with almost

double that.

Apparel as a whole, however, did not experience the same kind of YoY growth as Office

Supplies did and similarly did not contain nearly as many promos. Looking forward, we can

see that brands use promos to compete with each other during the busy shopping seasons of

the year and position deeply-discounted “old” technology as loss leaders in order to draw in

customers. Electronics and personal computers will be more clearly associated with back-to-

school as digital devices become staples on back-to-to school lists for students of all ages.

Finally, Amazon continues to outpace brick-and-mortar sales – and the brands that are

capitalizing on this growth are utilizing promotions to outsell the competition.

To get the latest and most accurate industry insights and reports, check out our weekly articles at www.oneclickretail.com/insights, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

One Click Retail (OCR) is a market leader in eCommerce data measurement, sales analytics and search optimization for brand manufacturers in North America, Europe and Asia. Thanks to our proprietary sales calculations that are 98.5% accurate down to the SKU level, OCR’s accuracy is unrivaled in the marketplace. The OCR Product Suite provides 1st and 3rd party business intelligence across the 30 largest retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, Target, Staples and Home Depot. The world’s top brands, such as Procter & Gamble, Panasonic, Nestle, Hamilton Beach and HP, rely on OCR insights to drive sales and profitability across eCommerce.

Founded in 2013 by eCommerce experts from Amazon, Walmart, Target, Overstock and other leading retailers, OCR was acquired in 2016 by Ascential plc (LSE: ASCL.L), a UK-based international B2B media company with a focused portfolio of market-leading events and information services products.

To learn more about how OCR can provide your brand with the competitive edge in today’s ecommerce marketplace, visit www.oneclickretail.com.

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