She's Leaving Home (clutching a cell phone)

What happened to make back to school shopping the second largest retail event of the year? Just six years ago, college spending on back to school (excluding textbooks), was $16.7 billion. Now in 2009, spending is estimated to almost double, $30 Billion.

One suggestion for these huge increase in numbers, is that the Back to School season speaks, not only to the practical need for items to get students through the school year, but of the emotional, and psychological need of parents, as their children leave home for the first time.

Ken Nisch with brand and design firm JGA is quoted in a recent USA Today article that "back to school has become a little bit like a Hallmark holiday". The need of parents to control the transition to college, along with a desire to share in the student's campus experience, has created this emotional need to embrace the back to school shopping experience.

This is the emotional side of shopping and purchasing. The need to be part of a major life event. Shopping calms parental anxiety as young ones head out the door, while at the same time, evoking warm fuzzy feelings of their own school or college bound experiences.

These are powerful emotional triggers. It is no surprise then that the focus at this time of year is less on the practical and more on the connectedness between parents, sons, and daughters. Communication devices such as cell phones are the primary purchases as parents adjust to the anxieties of staying in touch with their loved ones.

All this anxiety shopping speaks, as well, to Generation Y, and their relationship with home. Generation Y wants to stay connected to the family unit. Conversely, the Gen Y "helicopter" parent is more than happy to stay knitted into their children's life.

Those retailers that serve the campus back to school crowd can speak to parent's emotions by considering them as a vital and different sales channel. Supporting and speaking directly to parents when they are shopping in the campus store, opens up many possibilities to increase sales, and connect with a new customer group.

Gone is the concept that Back to School shopping is a function. Now it's role is that of emotional fulfillment. Which does, at the end of the day, means that line of Hallmark cards marking the occasion can't be far away.

Sometimes a Great Notion - Sept 7. 2009

Oh the post Labor Day malaise! After laboring all weekend, The Retail
Muse dons his mop top wig, sings Christmas with Dylan, gets tangled up
in blue receipts, checks out the lost symbol, gets blinded by OLED lights, and channels his inner Steve McQueen.

Happy Musical Notions!

Labor Day 2009
Nothing like the Labor Day weekend (or Labour Day for those north of the 49th). The unofficial end of summer, and packing the school, and
college kids back to school and academia. Did you know that Labor Day was actually started in Canada? In the 1870's in Hamilton and Toronto. Noticing a good idea, and dropping a vowel, the first Labor Day rally was held in the US in 1882. To celebrate, The Retail Muse listened to cheesy 80's song's from Loverboy, especially "Working for the Weekend". You can check out the video, and headbands, here.

Can't Buy Me Love.
It's time for the 21st century Beatle mania this week, as a host of products hit the shelves starting September 9. (9/9/9 - get it?). All the Beatles recording are being released on CD, re-mastered with new
liner notes, videos, and exceptional sound quality. Considering that the last releases on CD, sounded like the Beatles recorded the tracks
in the back garden loo, Beatles fans young and old, are eagerly
awaiting the new releases. Box sets, including a true mono set, are being released, along with the new Beatles Guitar Hero where you can channel your inner Beatle and rock out to"Octopus Garden". Now doesn't this sound like a fun lunch time activity on campus?

Pundits are betting on the Beatles single handily reviving the CD format, and boosting CD sales for the first time in years. Seems like a tough order to save free falling CD sales, but the Beatles still have legs even 40 years later, and expect these products to be must haves from now, through the holiday season.

Little Dylan Drummer Boy.
In the, "you can't make this stuff up" category, the latest news from the Bob Dylan camp is the October release of his first Christmas Album! Yes that's right, Dylan will growl, grumble, and mutter his way
through a host of traditional Christmas classics, all in the name of raising money and awareness for Feeding America. A guarantee to provide 4 million meals to families in need, is included in the press
release.

It's such a strange item, for such a worthwhile cause. The Retail Muse is hoping stores will look into stocking this CD, with proceeds going to support student food banks this holiday season. After all, If there is one item to buy for the Christmas season, this is it!

Tangled up in Receipts
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on the growing length of customer receipts. Buying a pack of gum these days, seems to generate a novella of information.Everything from bar codes, product descriptions, return policies and feedback opportunities abound.

Customers seem a little disenchanted with the lengthy paper trail, questioning the value of the information and the waste of paper. On the flip side though, Customers respond to comment requests and coupon offers on receipts at a much greater level than traditional comment cards and mail outs.

A Lost Symbol?
Next week is the big Dan Brown, Lost symbol week for booksellers.
Brown's follow up to the Da Vinci Code, hits the street September 15, with a 5 million copy print run from Knopf. Amazon and Barnes and
Noble are going gangbusters with early orders, with independent booksellers concerned about price discounting and the book available everywhere. Booksellers are looking for ways to market the book, including giving it away with a $100 in store purchase.

Blinded by the OLED Lights
OLED Lights, or Organic Light Emitting Diodes, are being touted as the next great environmental lightning solution with a wide range of
applications. These new lights not only exist as one single light, but can be manufactured into large sheets of light for use in commercial and retail applications. Although the cost is high, the price will come down as designers and manufactures begin looking to this new technology as a viable and illuminating solution for environmentally sustainable lighting solutions.

Steve McQueen and the Fast Machines
Sheryl Crow crooned a few years ago about being "like Steve McQueen,Needs a fast machine". Now the fashion industry has caught up, and
Steve McQueen is the new icon fashion face for a number of designers.
Dolce and Gabbana, Gucci, and Michael Kors have all launched menswear items featuring, or inspired by, the long lost "king of cool" Although aimed at the over 50's crowd that remember McQueen, the designers see
the actor gaining traction with the 20 something crowd.

Tweeting Value

Marshall MacLuan wrote that the medium is the message. If this is true, then new social networking applications, specifically Twitter, should be the holy grail to market and promote products to wayward customers.

Companies, (and specifically their marketing departments), have wasted no time jumping on the twitter bandwagon. It's free, easy to use, and blasts simple marketing messages out to a wide range of users with rapid speed. But with all these positives, do customers really want to know about pizza promotions and free coffee?

If there is a place for this marketing angle, then surely there must also be a place to use twitter as a tool to engage customers, add some value to your business, and create opportunities to enhance your service. Checking this idea out, The Retail Muse found a few great ideas that make twitter an effective, and powerful online medium, especially for the campus market.

Clever Customer Service
Large companies such as Comcast have found that twitter is an effective way to respond to customer help queries. Other companies, both large and small, have also used Twitter as a way to reach customer comments and complaints in record time. For campus stores the ability to respond quickly to student questions is a huge benefit. Imagine how swiftly you can respond to student complaints, solving the problem in a proactive manner, before they have told 10 friends.

Feedback and Focus Groups.
Every business wants to know how they are doing, but struggle with the machinations of creating, compiling and analyzing surveys and focus groups. How about using twitter to get simple immediate feedback from your student customers? Simple questions such as "did you get what you needed?" "What would you like to see in store?". Consider also watching discussions about your store on line. As one company spokesman said, "twitter is the canary in the coalmine". Watching for customer discussions about your store is a good way to hear feedback and quickly respond to it.

Customer Expectation Management
Jet Blue tweets flight delays. Comcast used twitter to inform subscribers that a lightning storm knocked out transmission, and approximately when service would be restored. United Linens advised customers by twitter that deliveries would be delayed after a major snowstorm.

Thinking about these ideas, it seems like the campus store could utilize twitter very effectively, to keep students in the loop, and informed. Tweet how long your rush lineups are, or how ling the wait time is. Tweet when the store is N|OT busy at rush. Let them know the best times to come in. Use twitter to let students know when that back ordered textbook finally arrived, or that you are sold out of a specific title,and the approximate delivery date. How bought tweeting the top titles needed for buyback? Reminders about your return policy deadlines? All these and more are a simple and effective way to provide valuable real time information to your student customers.

Employee Recruitment
Sodexho, a food services provider on many campuses, has been using twitter as an employee recruitment tool. Simple and effective, Sodexho sends an automated message out to prospects whenever a position opens up. The messages are opened 30% of the time. What a great inexpensive way to recruit casual and student employees for your store.

And More
Do you have other ideas? how have you being using twitter in your store? Tweet "the Retail Muse" and let us know! Good ideas are just a tweet away.