Shopping Blog

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Posted by Kim Doan, The DoubleClick Search Team

July - the month of barbeques, swimming pools, and the height of summer fun - also signals the second largest retail event of the year, Back to School shopping. To understand how people are shopping this year, we surveyed back to school shoppers and took a look at search trends on Google and YouTube. 

Our research shows two trends: first, this is the earliest back to school shopping season on record, as the ability to research online at any time, anywhere, on any device, has sped up shopping noticeably. And second, based on Google Shopping data the odds are you’ll see a lot of One Direction lunchboxes at your local school this year.

Research in July, purchase in August
Our study found that not only are people already shopping, by the end of July most of their back to school research will already be complete. On Google, searches for “Back to School Sales” started trending two weeks earlier this year than in 2012. While just a small group of consumers have started to make purchases already, the momentum will pick up quickly toward the end of the month.

Just over a third of online shoppers will use their smartphones as an on-the-go tool to help make shopping easier. Of these, the 66% will use their smartphone to locate a retailer nearby, 64% will compare prices, and 43% will search for store item availability.

What are people shopping for Google?
More than 60% of shoppers will begin their shopping online, and most shoppers report that online research will have a notable impact on their in-store purchase decisions. Some of the top trending back to school searches on Google Shopping this month include:

• One Direction school supplies 
• Messenger bags 
• North Face school backpacks 
• Personalized school supplies
• Nike Free 5.0 kids 

College students drive biggest spending 
Our study found that while shoppers for high school students expect to spend $347 on average, people shopping for college expect to spend nearly double that amount at $614 on average. Some of the top trending searches for dorm decorations on Google Shopping this month include:

• Pink dorm bedding 
• Dorm chandelier 
• Big Joe bean bag chair 
• Calendar wall decals 
• String lights 

Shoppers looking for a bargain 
Back to school shoppers are price conscious and are looking for deals, with 94% of shoppers saying that a promotion or sale would persuade them to purchase a product. We found that people are more sale conscious when buying consumer electronics than other school supplies. Consumer electronics shoppers were more likely to make a purchase if there was a back to school promotion, free shipping offer, or one day sale. Brands like Dell are promoting deals of the day and in-store pickup in Google search ads to help shoppers with their back to school shopping.
Going online for inspiration 
Increasingly, consumers are searching online not just for price comparison but for inspiration. Back to school shoppers are using sites like YouTube to find authentic recommendations - 73% of shoppers who watch online videos for back to school shopping are looking for product reviews from “people like me.” These videos can be highly influential on sales - our apparel study found that 4 in 10 shoppers visited a store online or in-person as a direct result of watching an apparel video.

• On YouTube, back to school shopping searches spike every August and have doubled from last year. 
• Popular searches on YouTube during back to school shopping season include “room tour,” “school supplies,” “school makeup tutorial,” and “haul videos.” 
• In the last week alone, more than 205,000 haul videos have been posted to YouTube from people sharing their latest purchases of clothing, supplies and dorm room decorations. 
• Brands are also connecting with back to school shoppers on YouTube - Office Depot, Verizon Wireless and Kmart have already uploaded back to school videos on their YouTube channels to promote sales and school supplies. 

 Posted by Jacalyn Stolt, Sales Development Manager, Google

[cross-posted on the Official Google Blog]

Time to sharpen those pencils: now that the back-to-school season is winding down and students are back at their desks, we thought we’d take a look at some popular searches from the last few weeks. Students across the U.S. are hitting the books—although, as we found, not all their back-to-school searches are academically inclined.

Overall, search interest in [back to school] is up about 10 percent from last year.



After a three-month hiatus, everyone wants to make a great impression on the first day of school. Searches related to starting fresh—like [kids shoes], [kids haircuts] and [healthy school lunches]—jump during the back-to-school season. People are also eager to sport just the right look—searches for [first day of school outfit] have increased 20 percent since the 2010 season.

A well-stocked locker is also top of mind for many at the start of the school year. Search interest for back-to-school staples like pencils, notebooks and backpacks routinely peaks during the season, as kids compare colors, styles and designs online. But tech-savvy students are seeking new essentials for the classroom. Searches for [tablet] exceeded searches for [backpack] for the first time in a July-September period. And with [etextbook] searches up 50 percent from September 2010, look for ereaders to slip into more backpacks in the future.







Crossing items off the back-to-school list is rewarding, but it’s a lot more satisfying when there’s a bargain involved. This year is no exception with shoppers scanning for deals before heading to stores. Searches for [back to school coupons] and [back to school sales] increased 10 and 25 percent, and searches for [printable coupons] jumped 45 percent from last year’s season.




College-bound freshmen seem to be looking for ways to take charge of their finances. Searches for [bank account] and [open bank account] peak in August, and were up about 20 percent from last year’s back-to-school season. Searches for [student credit card] are also highest during this time of year, along with searches for the means to pay a credit card bill: [campus jobs]. In recent years, securing a steady source of income has trumped on-the-spot spending. While searches for [student credit card] have decreased 30 percent since 2004, searches for [campus jobs] have steadily increased, up 50 percent in the same period.




Finally, we’ll leave you with a few back-to-school essentials that might not have made your list. To avoid using the modern version of the old “my dog ate my homework” excuse, protect your computer with a [laptop lock]—searches regularly spike in in August. If you’ve been thinking about picking up an instrument, now’s the time to jump on the bandwagon (pun intended), as searches for [flute], [cello], [violin] and [clarinet] jump every September. And for your mother’s sake (and your roommate’s), find a good [laundry service] on campus. Search interest peaks in September, though the clothes-washing learning curve lasts the entire year.




Posted by Julie Krueger, Industry Director, Retail

According to the National Retail Federation's (NRF) 2011 Back-to-School survey, 52% of families with school-aged children plan to purchase electronics this year. Among college students and their families, electronics will be the largest category for back-to-school retail expenditures. (1)

As a marketer, do you have a back-to-school strategy in place for these consumers? Here are some key 2011 back-to-school consumer trends that you can take advantage of:

Back-to-School shoppers are...

Online
Don't under-estimate the power of the Internet: NRF's survey found that consumers who shop multiple channels will spend 40% more than those who only shop in stores. (1) This is supported by Traqline 2011 data for popular back-to-school products such as laptop computers, where we also find that the higher the price bucket, the more consumers shop online for a product. (2)


In addition, PriceGrabber's recent back-to-school survey found that 69% of consumers plan to shop online for back-to-school this year, as compared to only 23% in 2010. (3)

NRF's survey also shows that 32% of back-to-school and 33% of back-to-college shoppers (Adults 18+) indicated they may also purchase their back-to-school items online this year. The number for back-to-college increases to 46% when you look at the Adults 18-24 category, indicating that college students, who either buy themselves or largely influence back-to-college purchases, may be shopping online for back-to-college purchases even moreso. (1)

Tactics to utilize:

• Bid aggressively to ensure your products are top of mind during this key retail period when consumers are more actively searching for electronics products


• Use Ad Extensions - such as Ad Sitelinks, Product Extensions, Location Extensions, etc. - to better distinguish your offering from the competition. Consider creating a separate [Back-to-School] site link for your ads


• Back-to-School shoppers come in all shapes and sizes, from kids influencing their parents, to college students, to moms, dads, and other family members. Be sure to have a unique strategy to reach these audiences through audience and content targeting strategies, using our AdPlanner tool, on the Google Display Network. Also, be sure to take advantage of our demographic bidding option

Bargain-Hunting
The NRF survey shows that 50% of respondents are shopping for back-to-school sales more often this year. In addition, 30% are doing more comparative shopping online. (1) PriceGrabber's survey tells us that 41% of shoppers plan on visiting retailer websites to print out coupons. (3) Finally, Google Insights shows us that the term [back to school sale] not only steeply peaks at this time of year, but search interest has also increased each year. (4)

For consumer electronics specifically, Traqline shows us that, of the consumers who shopped for laptops online in Q3 2010 (67%), 76% did so to compare prices and 61% did so to check for current promotions or sales.

It's official: Back-to-school shoppers use price as a prime consideration factor when purchasing a product, and they love bargains!

Tactics to utilize:

• Consumers are looking for sales. If you have special back-to-school promotions, highlight them in your ads! Utilize Offer Ads on both desktop and mobile to incentivize consumers to purchase your products


• Consider bidding on higher funnel terms, such as [back-to-school sale], to be a part of the back-to-school consideration set earlier on in a buyer's purchase process


• Remarket back-to-school ads and discounts to consumers who have been to your site in the past

On Mobile
A recent Deloitte survey found that 64% of surveyed back-to-school shoppers will use their smartphone during their shopping process. (4) On Google's end, we saw a lift of 500% in mobile searches for retail and consumer electronics categories over the summer months last year. (7)

There's no doubt that mobile is a huge opportunity during the back-to-school season for consumer electronics marketers; the question is, do you have a mobile strategy in place to seize this opportunity?

Tactics to utilize:

• We not only have a list of mobile tactics for the back-to-school marketer, but an entire blog post! Check out this July 2011 back-to-school 'Mobile Insights' post by Mobile Ads Account Executive Grace Dolan.

If you haven't yet done so, it's not too late to begin on your back-to-school online market strategy. NRF found that 28% of back-to-school shoppers plan on shopping 1-2 weeks right before school begins. (1) Get started today!


Posted by Payal Shah, The Google Technology Markets Team

Sources:
1) National Retail Federation/BIG Research 2011 Back to School and Back to College Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey
2) Traqline 2011 data for Portable/Notebook Computers category
3) PriceGrabber Back-to-School Shopping Forecast Survey
4) Google Insights for Search, 2004-2011, for search term 'back to school sale'
5) Traqline 2010 data for Portable/Notebook Computers category
6) Deloitte 2011 Back-to-School Shopping Survey
7) Google Internal Data 2009-2011 as referenced in the ‘Mobile Insights’ Google Retail Blog post on 7/18/2011

The trends for ‘back-to-school’ queries over the past four years illuminate more than when queries start and peak. These searches have been analyzed and grouped within categories that can help shape retailers’ display strategy for this year’s back to school season on the Google Display Network. The following categories and sub-categories, in order to frequency, were the most commonly searched themes for back-to-school queries:

• Society: Education, Legal, Social Science
• Entertainment: Music and Movies
• Shopping: Apparel, Mass Merchants and Department Stores, Flowers Gifts and Greetings
• Local: Regional Content, Jobs

As the graph below indicates, back to school searches begin to quickly rise at the beginning of July, peak in mid-August, and tail off at the end of September. So start gearing up for back-to-school season, and be sure to target these relevant categories on the Display Network!















Posted by Jieun Baek, The Google Retail Team

How are students spending the last days of summer? Finding ways to look their best for the upcoming school year, of course. “First day of school outfit” searches grew 96% from 2008 to 2009 with an even stronger and earlier interest this year.

Who doesn’t love a good deal? We all know consumers like to get the most bang for their buck. Savvy consumers continue to hunt for the best discounts, with “coupon” searches seeing a continual lift in volume.

Students are not the only target audience this Back-to-School season: Parents are also using this opportunity to shop for other family members and themselves. In fact, 46% of consumers plan to take advantage of the back-to-school season to purchase items for themselves.

And what is driving their purchase decisions? Sales, coupons, and free shipping lead the way as the top influences of Back-to-School purchases.Posted by Heidi Spector, the Google Retail Team

Not surprisingly, the Back-to-School shopping season expands beyond the summer months, beginning before Memorial Day and lasting all the way into September. When we spoke to consumers, we found that Back-to-School research spans evenly across these months, with 75% of shoppers yet to begin researching their purchases.

While students celebrate the return of carefree summer days, retailers are readying themselves for the start of the new school year. The start of 2010 saw impressive growth in back-to-school searches. In fact, ‘back-to-school’ queries increased 15% in popularity compared to the same period in 2008.

Back to school searches have been steadily rising in popularity the past month, to nobody's surprise. As we closed out the month of July, we saw various keywords rising especially fast this year compared to the same back to school time frame last year. Users around this time are showing much stronger interest in 'college laptops,' 'school shoes,' and 'backpacks' among other things than 2008: [2]

When I was in 8th grade a few of my friends started using this new thing on the computer called the “internet” and online shopping wasn't even a concept yet. By mid-summer I’d start to see commercials for Starter Jackets, Trapper Keepers and Reebok Pumps while I watched TV shows like The Fresh Prince and Saved by the Bell. I’d see countless pages of clothing ads in Seventeen magazine and hear catchy jingles from local retailers while waiting for the next song on Casey Kasem’s Top 40. My parents usually discovered back-to-school deals through the Sunday newspaper circular. I remember my dad handing my mom the circular on Sunday morning saying, “Maria – there are some good deals on sneakers over at Foot Locker this weekend.”

So much has changed since then. Thanks to my DVR, I haven’t watched a commercial on TV for what feels like years (although I do catch the occasional funny commercial on YouTube). Thanks to my iPod and Pandora, I rarely listen to the radio anymore. The only newspaper I read is the one I get for free on the subway in the morning. Even my parents media consumption and shopping habits have changed. They stopped subscribing to the newspaper when I was in college and my frugal father loves finding coupons on “The Google.” Now he says “Maria – before you go to the mall let’s search on ‘The Google’ to see if we can find a good deal.”

This all reflects the fact that people’s shopping habits – across generations - have fundamentally changed. Now people take the initiative to look for the goods and services they want instead of relying on marketers to feed them information. If retailers and manufactures aren’t providing information when consumers want it, then their brand will likely fall out of the buyer's consideration set.

So this back-to-school season, don’t fall out of consideration! Here are 4 things to take into account when thinking about your back-to-school marketing plans:

1. Shopping Starts Early
Like many kids across the country today, in early June I’d be daydreaming about summer vacation and cheerfully singing along to Alice Cooper’s classic anthem “School’s Out” with my friends. However, today retailers should be humming a different tune. Back-to-school season is only a few weeks away. Yes, you read that correctly – weeks. If you look at search query trends on Google.com, terms like “school supplies” and “back to school” begin to rise in late June and continue through late September (See Graph). Retailers should be prepared to respond to this rise is consumer demand immediately in an effort to capture as much share of the back to school market as possible.

2. Tailor Campaigns to Moms AND Kids
Growing up, my mom was the primary back to school purchaser for me and my brother and today moms continue to be the gatekeeper for purchases related to their kids. We’ve found that moms are doing their homework when it comes to shopping:

• 82% of moms go online prior to any purchase [1]
• 57% of moms research online before purchasing in stores. [2]

Although my mom had final say on what we could buy, my brother and I had a lot of input into the brands and products that we eventually purchased. And today, kids have so many more brands to choose from that it is important that retailers not forget this influential target audience. A study from the NRF & BIGResearch found that 89% of moms say that their child directly influences their Back-to-School spend to a degree [3]. Additionally, about 50% of teens say online searches have an “extreme impact” on their purchase decisions [4]. If I had Google.com when I was 12 years old, I bet I would have found a way to convince my parents to buy me a pair of Reebok Pumps.

Retailers should adopt a two-pronged online marketing strategy to reach both audiences. For example, let’s say you sell sneakers. Increase brand preference among tweens & teens with targeted messages on sites where they spend a lot of time like Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace. Reach influencers with display ads on niche sites that review the latest sneaker trends (there over 50 in the Google Content Network right now!). Support these campaigns with tailored search ads to direct them when they seeking more information about your shoes. Reach moms who are ready to spend money and are searching on terms like “sneakers”, “sneaker deals”, or on your branded terms because their son or daughter can’t stop raving about your sneakers.

3. Bargain Hunting
Though my formative years were spent without the shadow of a major recession hanging over us, my father, the frugal fellow that he is, wisely treated every shopping expedition as if we were on the brink of entering the next Great Depression. To some people saving money is a sport, and with all the new technology available today, we are on a whole new playing field.

A recent Google study found that 53% of people spend more time online searching for the latest promotions and discounts [5] and 40% are very likely to use coupons accessed online [6]. Even younger folks are using coupons. 51% of college students are coupon clippers who are very likely to use coupons accessed online [7]. Search query trends also support this data. Queries for the term “coupons” on Google.com significantly increased during the 2008 holiday season and this trend continued into 2009. Since search query trends are an indicator of consumer demand, we can see that people are increasingly turning to Google.com as a resource for shopping.

Knowing that value is important to consumers and that people are searching for the best deals, retailers must optimize their search campaigns to ensure potential shoppers are aware of their back-to-school promotions.

4. Don’t Be Invisible: Manage Your Virtual Storefront
My mom and I usually went to the mall for back-to-school shopping. We always knew what we needed: clothes, shoes, school supplies, backpacks, etc. However, often times we didn’t have specific brands in mind so we would browse the stores to see what was available. Now that most retailers have a virtual store, browsing has translated online and the search engine is the equivalent of a mall. People search for products like “jeans” or “computers” and the organic and paid search results are similar to the storefronts you might see in your local mall. Your text ad is your storefront message (ie “Back-to-School Sale”) and your landing page is your in-store experience.

The virtual mall also gives manufacturers an advantage they have never had before. At your local mall, manufactures usually don’t have a storefront. Instead they rely on retailers to showcase their brand in a prominent position within the store. With search results, manufactures have their own storefront and the ability influence consumers who are browsing for a product they sell.

Queries for common back to school products such as “backpacks” or “kid’s sneakers” begin to rise in late June and spike through late September. These searchers are doing the same thing my mom and I did in the mall all those years ago, only they are doing it from the comfort of their home or office. If you sell backpacks and you aren’t on that search result page, it is equivalent to not having a store in the mall. Consumers won't find you and they will end up shopping elsewhere.


[1] Thinking about your upcoming holiday shopping, in which of the following ways do you think you'll approach your Holiday Shopping? Select all that apply. N=2,593. October 2008 OTX/Google Holiday Shopping Intentions Study.
[2] “Back-to-school shopping moves online,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 25, 2008
[3] National Retail Federation 2008 Back To School Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch.
[4] Performics and ROI Research, as cited in “Tweens Search for Products Online, Get Parents to Buy Them in Store,” MediaPost, August 8, 2008
[5] Google Touchpoints Consumer Survey, N=8,675, January 2009
[6] Platform-A and IRI study as cited in “Young Coupon Clippers Looking Online,” Research Brief, April 10, 2009
[7] Platform-A and IRI study as cited in “Young Coupon Clippers Looking Online,” Research Brief, April 10, 2009

Posted by Eva Wallman, the Google Retail Team