Stores aiming at kids take page from MySpace
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Taking their cues from the success of social networking sites such as MySpace, retailers have teens in their crosshairs. The large retailers with an online presence know that school-age kids are connecting and shopping through the Internet. They're tailoring their products to fill that niche, reports Technews World.
Notice, for example, the bigger-than-ever push to shop online for back-to-school supplies.
"Online retail reflects the offline retail season," Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst with Forrester Research, told the E-Commerce Times. "Back-to-school is usually very strong in certain categories -- office supplies, general merchandise, sporting goods."
Now that the back-to-school season is over, retailers are taking cues on what's cool from the Internet.
"Wal-Mart, for example, was playing around with social networking, building on MySpace, being a place where students and kids would want to hang out.""Hopefully, that would have a trickle effect," Mulpuru explained. "They'd be at the Wal-Mart and see things they would want or need for school and would influence their parents' spending decisions."
In a Nielson poll, retailers reported that most of the top 10 destinations with back-to-school shopping campaigns saw an increase in image-based online advertising impressions during the July to August time frame.