As the virus took hold and governments encouraged citizens to stay home, gaming became the perfect hobby.

Tens of thousands of people talked about buying gaming consoles online in March and April, but the big winner was a game that we’ve talked about before (and we’ll probably talk about again). Animal Crossing automatically appeared as a key topic within the intent-to-buy conversations (even though we only searched for games consoles). It just goes to show how a single, very popular game can end up tempting consumers to buy a whole new console. In this case, it’s the Nintendo Switch which immediately saw huge demand as lockdowns began and the game was released in March.

Looking at demand for particular electrical goods this week, alongside all the other trends, we’re struck by the strangeness of it all. A sudden and totally unexpected demand for printers or clippers or refrigerators could never have been predicted at the start of the year. Every little change in demand represents big implications for those working in that sector, and each trend adds up to the wider picture of how much life has changed in just a few months.

The end of ‘back to school’?

There are a whole range of annual consumer trends that you can set your watch by. At least, there were before the Covid-19 pandemic.

One of the biggest is around kids going back to school and all the stationery, clothing, and tech purchases that go with it.

Of course, 2020 is very different to previous years. Schools and colleges have been shut down all over the world. While governments have worked hard to reopen them, in many places it’s just too early. Meanwhile, where they do reopen, localized outbreaks can cause schools to be shut again (this has been seen in Leicester, UK, and Gütersloh, Germany).

As it stands, even if all schools were open right now, 36% of people wouldn’t feel comfortable even letting their children attend.

How has this affected consumer buying? With kids staying home, a rise in homeschooling, and students wondering if they’ll be able to physically attend college in the fall, we’ve found some big changes.

Looking at Google Trends, we can get a good idea of the regular ‘back to school’ cycle. Below we look at searches around school uniforms and school supplies.

Every year, both spike at the end of July/beginning of August as vacations come to an end and parents prepare for their child’s next semester. School supplies also see a jump in January as the Christmas holidays finish up and the new year begins.

All was looking normal in 2020 until Covid-19 began to spread. School uniform searches quickly dropped off far below their usual levels. With schools closing, the need for uniforms disappeared. Searches have since recovered though, and look to be returning to their usual seasonal levels.

There’s a different picture for school supplies. They saw their usual January jump and fall this year, but they’re failing to rise as we head into July. What’s going on?

Along with worries about whether children will even be back in classrooms in 2020, it’s likely the supplies bought in January weren’t used up before school closures. That means there’s no need to stock up again on pencils, erasers, and notebooks.

We also looked at searches around ‘laptops for students’. They bucked their seasonal trend, but in a much different way.

Searches for student laptops actually jumped under Covid-19, spiking the same week the pandemic was officially declared. Since then, search interest reached its highest point in five years and has remained high since. If the seasonal bump in searches comes in August as well, levels will be unprecedented.

School closures clearly had people clamoring for laptops, most likely as parents and students realized they would have to prepare for long-term homeschooling and remote learning. We found that searches around both topics jumped at the same time as those for student laptops did.

This is proof that the ‘back to school’ consumer cycle has been totally disrupted by Covid-19, with different products affected in different ways. This is a wake up call, not just for those selling school-related products, but for all companies that rely on seasonal trends. They may not materialize in the same way this year.

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Thanks for reading

That’s it for the week. If you’d like to subscribe to our bulletins, head here. Have a wonderful weekend and we’ll be back on Monday.

Stay safe,

Brandwatch Response Team