Believe it or not, but there is a huge retail market surrounding what students get up to in their lives. It’s perhaps not that hard to believe though, considering just how much money they really have to spend, whether directly or indirectly through their parents and other sponsors. It makes for some rather interesting reading studying the retail marketing trends which specifically target students though because that’s one of the most effective ways through which to uncover some great savings. To do this and connect with their customers, there is a retail media network that retailers use to market specifically to their audiences and personalize areas they want so that they can bring in more customers to help build on what they are doing.

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Everything is Connected

In the early days of big businesses resolving to specifically target the students’ market with their products and services they tended to go it alone. Nowadays however it’s more of a joint effort with some rather interesting links forming between two or more seemingly unconnected offerings. Who would have thought that a clothing retailer would perhaps want to take advantage of something like a student bus pass arrangement to try and squeeze in a bit of their own advertising when reduced student bus fares seemingly have nothing to do with clothing? The thinking behind it is quite simple though and in the specific case of the clothing store targeting students travelling on a discounted bus fare, these students probably have just a little bit of extra money to spend, so why not perhaps entice them to spend that extra bit of money on a clothing item?

If you just take the time to follow the money-trail and the marketing trends targeting students, you may even end up being an ace at predicting where and when to benefit from some serious discounts. Some agencies even make use of verification tracking (like what SheerID excel in) to really hone in on their specific audience. I’m a bit lucky in that my gym-going efforts have me generally fitting into the clothes usually worn by people who fall within the age group of students, so whenever there are some special offers, discounts and sales targeted specifically at students, guess who’s on hand to capitalise as well?

What’s even more interesting however is a rather devious marketing ploy deployed specifically by retailers targeting student-buyers. Some of these retailers market special discounts, savings and promotional offers during that time of the month when they are fully aware that students don’t really have the disposable income to spend on those marked-down items. I truly believe there’s a whole science to this, but yeah, by the time the students do have some disposable cash (like at the end of the month when their next round of pocket money comes through), the previously marked-down items are no longer on special.

These items are often placed right at the front of the store so that they are the first thing that you see as you walk in. By then the students are so dead-set on buying those items that they overlook the fact that they’ve been returned to their original pricing and so buy them anyway. Those interested can read more about other retail merchandising methods over at https://www.tradebeyond.com/articles/merchandising-101.

So if there are any lessons to be learnt by students who are targets for the big retailers, try to save your money to spend when nobody else seems to have money to spend. People like me (who wear sizes similar to those of students’) could perhaps also use this information to save big on just about anything students also buy, unless of course those savings are specifically aimed at students who can produce student ids or other forms of proof that they are indeed still studying.

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