Parents Let Kids Help With Online School Shopping

Baldwin Louie — Fri, 10 Aug 2001 15:00:00 -0700

Now it’s easier for kids to avoid that embarrassing back-to-school trip to the mall.

According to a new study to be released Monday from researcher NFO WorldGroup: 74 percent of parents who do school shopping online are allowing their children to participate.

The survey found that parents involve their children in the online buying process in a variety of ways. Seventy-two percent of parents surveyed say their kids can vote on the color of the items purchased. Roughly half of the respondents said their kids would actually point-and-click for products themselves, while 42 percent allowed their kids to choose the Web sites at which they wanted to shop.

The researchers asked respondents about their plans to shop at 11 e-commerce sites in particular. Of those sites, Target’s proved to be the most popular destination, followed by the sites of J.C. Penney, L.L. Bean, Gap, Amazon.com, Bluelight.com, Staples, Lands' End, OfficeMax, Eddie Bauer and Barnes & Noble.

When shopping for books and supplies, 35 percent of families expect to visit Amazon.com, while only 7 percent expect to shop Barnesandnoble.com. More than half of those surveyed plan to buy school supplies, sportswear and outerwear online in the next three months, whereas only 13 percent of those surveyed plan to buy calculators. Fully 44 percent plan to buy a backpack.

Children can pick and choose as they please, but when it comes time to proceed to the checkout, parents step up to foot the bill. Only a third of the respondents plan to let their children participate in part of all of the check-out process, including typing in the credit card number.

Despite the economic downturn, more than half of the parents surveyed say they expect to spend the same amount on back-to-school buying as last year. Forty percent plan to spend more this year, and just 7 percent plan to spend less.

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Parents Let Kids Help With Online School Shopping