AI总结
核心结论
零售商正将返校促销季提前至6月，以应对消费者的通胀压力及库存管理需求。
结构逻辑
- 现象描述：沃尔玛、塔吉特、亚马逊等零售巨头在6月启动返校促销。
- 驱动因素：通胀导致消费者提前规划预算；零售商通过拉长销售季刺激需求并优化库存。
- 行业趋势：季节性消费习惯改变，购物季持续时间延长。
- 市场背景：美国不同地区的开学时间差异显著。
关键信息
- 关键数据：67%的返校购物者在7月初之前开启购物（2025年数据）；平均预算：中小学约858美元，大学生约1,326美元。
- 相关公司：Walmart (WMT), Target (TGT), Amazon (AMZN), Best Buy (BBY), Staples。
- 热点趋势：零售业季节性促销“早鸟化”、“精细化”。
关键问题与回答
- 问题：为什么返校促销季提前到来？
- 回答：消费者受通胀影响，需更早进行财务规划；零售商希望借此抢占竞争优势，更平稳地消化库存。
正文
A blurred person walks past a display of backpacks for sale in a store.
Large retailers are already touting back-to-school deals, earlier than in previous years. Jenny Kane/AP
Quick Summary
- Retailers like Walmart, Target and Amazon are promoting back-to-school sales earlier this year, with deals beginning in June.
- This shift is driven by shoppers seeking bargains due to inflation and retailers aiming to attract customers and manage inventory.
- Last year, 67% of back-to-school shoppers started by early July, up from 55% in 2024, according to a National Retail Federation survey.
This summary was generated with AI and reviewed by an editor. about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.
- Retailers like Walmart, Target and Amazon are promoting back-to-school sales earlier this year, with deals beginning in June.View more
Back-to-school shopping season is already here, at least at some retailers.
Some schools in the U.S. still have a few days left before summer vacation, but that isn’t stopping Walmart from touting deals on back-to-school dorm furniture and electronics. Target is discounting backpacks. And Amazon.com is highlighting curated lists of back-to-school Prime Day deals that start June 23.
That’s because many shoppers, navigating years of higher prices, are already looking for bargains.
Stephanie Peyton, a school administrator and mother of three who lives in Phoenix, plans to start shopping for school supplies when deals hit this coming week. In her area, the school year wrapped up in late May, and as both her school and home budgets have strained under higher prices in recent years, she has learned to strike when prices drop, said the 50-year-old.
“The way I used to do it, the Thursday before school we popped in the car and did it all at once,” said Peyton. “We just can’t do that anymore.”
The early back-to-school push from retailers comes as seasonal shopping of all kinds has shifted earlier, say retail executives and consultants. In addition to deal hunting, it reflects a change in spending patterns since the pandemic: Some shoppers still fear that the most popular items will run out quickly. And retailers like an expanded season because it gives them more time to attract shoppers and sell through inventory.
Back-to-school shopping creep ramped up even more in recent years as shoppers navigated prolonged inflation and supply-chain shocks, such as last year’s tariffs and this year’s rising oil prices. Last year, around 67% of people shopping for back-to-school items had started doing so by early July, up from 55% during the same period in 2024, according to a survey from the National Retail Federation.
This year, the NRF expects even more early shoppers, said Mark Mathews, chief economist and head of research for the industry group.
“Inflation has impacted the way a lot of people think about shopping,” said Mathews. Overall, consumer spending is strong, he said, but the concern about costs “means if you see a sale, you jump on it, and you’re probably paying a lot more attention to that earlier in the shopping season.”
A person in a mask pushes a shopping cart past a back-to-school display that says "school list. check." in a Target store.
Many shoppers, navigating years of higher prices, are already looking for bargains. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Retailers will still make their primary back-to-school sales and marketing push later in the summer. But the first promotions for some large retailers are kicking off with their annual summer sales events, such as Amazon’s Prime Day, that start in coming days.
Those events are earlier than in years past. Amazon moved the start date of its Prime Day up several weeks, and competitors including Walmart, Target and Best Buy followed suit. Even with the earlier events, back-to-school will play a bigger role this year, said some retail executives.
Back in 2023, when Prime Day was in July, Amazon didn’t mention back-to-school items when it announced the event. This year, it is touting Prime Day deals in curated back-to-school and “off to college” product lists, including 40% off laptops and dorm-room decor.
Three years ago, Target also didn’t mention school items in its July summer-deals-event announcement. But this year, Target is promoting its June sales week as a major back-to-school event, touting 40% off JanSport backpacks and school staples like BIC pens.
Walmart first started highlighting more back-to-school products during its summer-deals event two years ago as it saw more shoppers searching for those items, said Victor Padilla, senior vice president of merchandising for Walmart U.S. This year, it will add more school-related items to its June sales event, he said. It is part of a larger trend of holiday and event-buying seasons like Christmas and the Fourth of July stretching longer, he said.
“We’re already starting to see customers shopping Halloween,” said Padilla.
Staples is also leaning in with an earlier summer-deals event that has a back-to-school focus, said Marshall Warkentin, president of U.S. retail. Shoppers want to stretch their budgets, he said, so the retailer wants to offer deals “well before the peak rush.”
A mother and her teenage daughter shop for school supplies at a Walmart.
Families often have a fixed budget for their spending on school supplies. LM Otero/AP
With early deals, retailers can both edge out competitors, as well as more easily manage their own seasonal inventory without resorting to steep discounts on unsold goods, said Brian McCarthy, a retail strategy leader for Deloitte Consulting. Retailers have to buy more inventory to capture an early demand spike, “but you don’t want to be at risk of not being able to sell through it all,” he said.
And back-to-school spending is often more of a need than a splurge for families, McCarthy said, so retailers want to aggressively protect their piece of what is often a fixed budget.
Families with students in elementary through high school last year planned to spend an average of $858.07 on clothing, shoes, school supplies and electronics, according to NRF survey data. College students and their families planned to spend an average of $1,325.85. This year’s survey hasn’t yet been released.
While shoppers don’t tend to splurge on school supplies like they might for gifts over the winter holidays, the season can be an early barometer of how flush shoppers feel heading into the busiest part of the shopping year.
Retailers watch carefully as consumers might gravitate to a “$90 backpack versus that $30 backpack,” said Mathews, the NRF economist.
Whether the promotions strike shoppers as too early may depend on what part of the country they are in. A 2023 analysis of over 1,500 public school districts by the Pew Research Center found substantial variation on school start-dates by region. More than two-thirds of students in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee were back at school by the week of Aug. 7. Schools in the Northeast and upper Midwest tended to start later, around Labor Day. In New York City, the last day of the 2025-26 school year is June 26, and the next year begins Sept. 10.
Walmart wants to help people spread out their spending calibrated to whenever their school year starts, said Padilla, the merchandising executive for the retailer.
Early spending tends to focus on “higher consideration” items such as laptops, dorm furniture and bulk buying from teachers, so Walmart is touting more of those items during its deals event in the coming week, he said.
Later, in the days just before school starts, sales of pens, folders and notebooks spike, he said.
“More basic supplies, you may be willing to wait,” he said.
Appeared in the June 22, 2026, print edition as ‘As Summer Begins, So Has Season of Back-to-School Sales’.