Back to School 2023 Shopping in Canada Survey | National Consumer Research – Caddle & RCC

One in four Canadians will go shopping for Back to School this year.

Consumers are planning to spend carefully this year and are more focused on purchasing lower-priced items than in years past.

Stationery is expected to be the top spending category (60.8%), followed by clothing (54.2%), books and music (23.4%) and personal or home electronics (18.2%).

29.5% of respondents said they plan to make their purchases 2-4 weeks before the start of school returns (vs 42.9% in 2022). 15.7% of Canadians will make their purchases one week or less before the start of school. This is a shift from 2021 and 2022 when we saw people shopping much earlier because many items were expected to be out of stock.  Now that they supply chain has normalized, consumers intend to shop closer to the start of the school year.