Back to School Season

Understanding Trends, Spending, and Strategic Opportunities in the 2025 U.S. Back-to-School Season

Every year, millions of households, from families with young children to college students, prepare for the return to classrooms. This period drives demand across a wide range of categories, including apparel, electronics, school supplies, and dorm and home essentials.

In 2025, the back-to-school season assumes even greater importance amid shifting consumer behaviors, persistent inflationary pressures, and the accelerated adoption of digital-first shopping channels. Consumers are not only seeking value and convenience, but are increasingly influenced by personalization, sustainability, and innovative product offerings. For retailers and brands, BTS represents a strategic opportunity: a chance to capture wallet share, strengthen brand loyalty, and test new marketing and merchandising strategies that can have lasting effects well beyond September.

Understanding the trends shaping this period is essential for stakeholders across the consumer ecosystem. The back-to-school season provides a real-time lens into household financial priorities, generational shopping habits, and the competitive dynamics of the retail landscape. Beyond immediate sales, it serves as a barometer of consumer confidence and a predictor of spending patterns leading into the all-important holiday quarter.

As we explore the 2025 season, this report will highlight market size forecasts, category-specific trends, shopper demographics, and strategic insights for retailers and brands. By examining these dimensions, we aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of the opportunities, challenges, and actionable strategies that define the back-to-school consumer landscape today.

K-12 Spending Trends in the Back-to-School Season

As families across the United States prepare for the new school year, K-12 education remains a significant driver of seasonal consumer spending. According to recent estimates, total K-12 spending is projected to reach $39.4 billion in 2025, following a peak of $41.5 billion in 2023. This spending encompasses essentials such as school supplies, apparel, electronics, and extracurricular resources, reflecting the broad range of needs parents and students prioritize during the back-to-school period.

Over the past few years, K-12 expenditure has shown a steady upward trend, rising from $33.9 billion in 2020 to $37.1 billion in 2021, before stabilizing around the mid-30s in 2022. The slight fluctuations observed in 2024 and 2025 suggest that while spending growth is moderating, K-12 remains a critical segment for retailers and brands targeting families.

This sustained level of spending highlights the importance of timely marketing and strategic promotions, particularly in categories like technology, school essentials, and educational tools, where families are willing to invest to support their children’s success. For brands and retailers, understanding these patterns is key to aligning inventory, promotions, and messaging with the specific demands of K-12 consumers during this peak season.

K-12 Spending Trends in the 2025 Back-to-School Season

For families across the United States, the K-12 back-to-school season continues to represent a substantial portion of annual household spending. In 2025, the average expected per-student expenditure for K-12 households is projected at $858, slightly below the 2023 peak of $890. This figure reflects a modest moderation in spending, following steady increases over the past several years, from $697 per student in 2019 to $849 in 2021 and $864 in 2022.

Despite this slight decline, K-12 spending remains a critical driver of retail activity, encompassing essentials such as school supplies, apparel, electronics, and extracurricular resources. The sustained investment by parents highlights their prioritization of quality and preparedness for the new school year, particularly in categories that support academic success and student development.

These patterns underscore the importance for retailers and brands to align marketing strategies, inventory management, and promotional efforts with K-12 consumer behaviors. Timing campaigns around peak spending windows, offering value-added promotions, and highlighting high-demand products can help capture household budgets and reinforce brand loyalty during this crucial season.

The 2025 back-to-school period, with its per-student expenditure approaching $860, reinforces the continued relevance of K-12 households in the broader retail landscape. For brands and retailers, understanding these trends is essential for maximizing engagement and sales during one of the most significant consumer spending periods of the year.

Early K-12 Shoppers: Motivations and Timing

An increasing share of K-12 families are starting their back-to-school shopping earlier in the season. In 2025, 64% of consumers report planning purchases early to spread out their shopping budget, slightly below the 2024 peak of 65%. This trend reflects households’ growing desire to manage expenses and avoid last-minute spending spikes, allowing for better financial planning throughout the busy BTS period.

Price sensitivity and promotions also continue to drive early shopping behaviors. Half of K-12 shoppers (50%) indicate that prices and promotions are too good to pass up, up from 47% in 2024. This demonstrates that well-timed sales and targeted promotions remain powerful levers for retailers aiming to capture early BTS demand.

The rising share of early shoppers highlights the importance of strategic timing in marketing, promotions, and inventory planning. Retailers and brands can leverage this trend by launching campaigns, limited time offers, and product releases earlier in the season to align with consumer behaviors, ultimately maximizing engagement and share of wallet before peak shopping weeks.

Share of Back-to-School Spending in the United States in 2025, by Product Category

In 2025, the distribution of back-to-school spending among U.S. households reflects the diverse needs of students and families preparing for the academic year. Clothing and accessories remain the largest expenditure category, accounting for 43% of total spending, as families prioritize outfitting children with school-appropriate apparel and seasonal essentials.

Technology products, including laptops, tablets, and other electronics, represent the second-largest category at 26%, highlighting the continued integration of digital tools in both classroom learning and remote education. School supplies, such as notebooks, backpacks, and stationery, make up 23% of spending, demonstrating the ongoing importance of foundational learning materials despite the rise of digital alternatives. Finally, home, health, and other miscellaneous items comprise 8% of household budgets, reflecting ancillary needs tied to the back-to-school season, from home study setups to personal care products.

This allocation of spending emphasizes key opportunities for retailers and brands to tailor promotions and inventory strategies. Apparel and tech products, being the dominant categories, require careful merchandising and targeted marketing campaigns, while school supplies continue to drive steady, predictable demand. Understanding these category-level dynamics is critical for maximizing engagement and sales during the peak K-12 back-to-school period.

Preferred Retail Formats in the 2025 Back-to-School Season

Where parents choose to shop during the back-to-school season is just as critical as how much they spend. In 2025, nearly half (46%) of surveyed families plan to spend the most at mass merchant retailers, up from 40% in 2024. Online retailers remain the second-most important channel, though their share declines slightly to 20%, suggesting that while digital remains strong, value-oriented brick-and-mortar formats are increasingly dominant.

Discount-driven channels such as off-price retailers (7%), specialty clothing stores (7%), and department stores (4%) round out the top five destinations where households expect to concentrate spending. The top three reasons parents cite for spending at these retailers are value for money (54%), one-stop shopping convenience (39%), and broad product availability (31%)—a clear signal that affordability and efficiency remain decisive factors in consumer choice.

Looking more broadly at shopping preferences, most families plan to visit multiple formats, with an average of five different retailer types expected per household. Discount-focused options dominate the list of preferred shopping destinations, with mass merchants (83%), online retailers (68%), and off-price retailers (38%) leading the way. Secondary destinations such as dollar stores (32%), warehouse membership clubs (30%), and specialty clothing retailers (30%) further reflect consumers’ desire to stretch budgets while accessing diverse product assortments.

For retailers and brands, these trends underscore the importance of value positioning and convenience. Those not competing primarily on discounts can differentiate by emphasizing unique products, seamless shopping experiences, and service-based value propositions. With families visiting multiple retail formats, opportunities exist to capture wallet share at multiple points in the shopping journey through omnichannel strategies, targeted promotions, and cross-category merchandising.

Generative AI in Back-to-School Shopping: Emerging Adoption Among Younger Parents

The 2025 back-to-school season is also marked by the growing influence of generative AI in shopping behaviors. While only 33% of parents plan to use generative AI (gen AI) tools for back-to-school shopping this year, adoption is highest among younger parents, particularly Gen Z (67%), compared with 34% of Millennials and 29% of Gen X. Despite this growing use, trust remains relatively low, with only 22% of parents expressing confidence in AI-assisted shopping, highlighting a gap between experimentation and reliance.

Among those who do leverage gen AI, the leading use case is comparing prices and finding deals (66%), reflecting families’ ongoing focus on value in a high-cost environment. Other common applications include review summaries (45%), shopping list generation (42%), and product discovery (36%), with more advanced uses such as personalized suggestions (32%) and budgeting tools (31%) gaining traction. These behaviors suggest that AI is serving primarily as a practical assistant rather than a transformational decision-maker in the shopping journey.

Consumer comfort with AI is steadily increasing. 40% of parents report feeling more comfortable using AI today compared to six months ago, with Gen Z again leading at 57%. Awareness of retailer-embedded AI assistants is high (50%), but actual frequent use remains limited (17%), signaling both an opportunity and a challenge for retailers.

For brands and retailers, these trends highlight an emerging strategic lever: AI-enabled shopping support. Early adopters can position themselves at the forefront by embedding AI into product search, personalized recommendations, and deal-finding tools. However, building trust, transparency, and tangible value will be critical to converting AI experimentation into habitual usage among parents preparing for the school year.

Leading Consumer Spending Events by Average Per Capita Spend in the U.S., 2024

Consumer spending in the United States peaks during a series of annual events, with back-to-college, winter holidays, and back-to-school leading the list in terms of average expected per capita expenditure. According to 2024 data, the average consumer is expected to spend $1,364.75 on back-to-college preparations, making it the highest-spending seasonal event.

Following closely, winter holidays gifts and celebrations account for an average spend of $901.99 per person, while back-to-school sees an average of $874.68, emphasizing its significance as a major retail period. Other events, such as Mother’s Day ($254.04), Father’s Day ($189.81), and Valentine’s Day ($185.81), contribute notably to consumer expenditures but remain considerably lower than the peak seasons.

This distribution underscores the financial impact of educational cycles and holiday periods on household budgets. Notably, spending on back-to-school and back-to-college items highlights the importance of school-related retail categories, from apparel and electronics to supplies and dorm essentials, reinforcing why these periods are critical for consumer-facing businesses.

Understanding these trends allows retailers and brands to optimize inventory, marketing campaigns, and promotions to align with consumer spending behavior, ensuring that they capture maximum value during the highest-demand periods of the year.

Conclusion

The 2025 back-to-school season reflects both the enduring strength of this retail event and the evolving dynamics shaping household spending decisions. While overall expenditures remain substantial, consumers are displaying sharper price sensitivity, earlier shopping patterns, and a stronger inclination toward value-driven channels such as mass merchants and discount retailers. At the same time, apparel and technology continue to dominate household budgets, underscoring the dual priorities of equipping students with both traditional essentials and digital learning tools.

Beyond the immediate spending figures, back-to-school shopping offers deeper insights into consumer behavior. Parents are navigating tighter budgets with strategic timing, balancing online and in-store formats, and increasingly experimenting with generative AI to compare prices, discover products, and streamline decisions. Although trust in AI remains limited, its rapid adoption among younger generations signals a structural shift in how future shopping journeys will be shaped.

For retailers and brands, these dynamics present both opportunities and challenges. Winning in the 2025 back-to-school season will depend on delivering value, convenience, and product availability while also investing in innovation that enhances the shopping experience. Those who can integrate promotions with personalization, bridge physical and digital formats, and build consumer trust in emerging technologies will be best positioned to capture wallet share.

Ultimately, the back-to-school period is more than just a seasonal peak—it is a strategic barometer of consumer confidence and a proving ground for retail models that will influence performance into the critical holiday quarter and beyond.

Sources and References:

National Retail Federation (NRF) Annual Back-to-School and Back-to-College Survey and Insights, 2025

https://nrf.com/research-insights/holiday-data-and-trends/back-to-school

Deloitte 2025 Back-to-School Survey Report: Consumer Spending, Trends, and Retail Insights

https://www.deloitte.com/content/dam/insights/articles/2025/us188226_cic-back-to-school/pdf/DI-2025-Back-to-School.pdf