While in-store shopping overwhelmingly remains the shopping channel of choice among parents of school-aged children, the Internet is making inroads, a National Retail Foundation survey has found.
More than 95% of parents surveyed indicated that they preferred buying back-to-school merchandise in a retail setting. But 13% said they plan to use the Internet, and 20.7% indicated that they would use catalogs.
In 1999, 57.5% of all respondents indicated that they were using the Internet for the first time last year. This year, that figure dropped to 44%. But among those parents that used the Internet last year to shop, 56% said they will do so again, compared with 42.5% last year who said their experiences in 1998 would lead them to do so.
The survey of 883 school-aged parents was conducted on behalf of the National Retail Federation by Virginia-based Market Facts.
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