If you’ve visited a big-box or office-supply store in recent weeks, you know that retailers are ready for the back-to-school shopping season to begin, even if children aren’t. You can’t blame stores for being excited, though: parents say that they plan to spend more on outfitting their kids for school this year than they have in recent years.

Of course, what people say they plan to do in the future and what they end up doing once their wallets are actually out are different things. However, in a survey by the obviously impartial International Council of Shopping Centers, two-thirds of shoppers say that they plan to spend more during the upcoming back-to-school shopping season.

When the back-to-school season starts is a matter of some debate: we’ve seen stores for which the season is crucial start their ads and promotions in mid-June, which is before schools in some parts of the country have even let kids out for the summer.

Retailers admit that their reason for doing this is to draw shoppers in to pick up their loss leaders, like impossibly cheap notebooks or packages of paper, before they go anywhere else to buy the same items.

Back-to-School Shoppers Plan Biggest Spending Boost in Years [Bloomberg]

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