As classrooms and dorm rooms fill up again, the 2026 back-to-school season handed marketers an unfamiliar combination. Inflation remains parents' top concern this year, per Epsilon data, while the broad availability of tools such as AI chatbots has produced a consumer who is both willing and equipped to hunt for deals. Loyalty programs are part of the toolkit too: 46% of parents plan to use them to cut costs, up 7% from a year ago, according to Epsilon. Marketing Dive pulled three numbers from August that sum up the season.
Deloitte's 19th annual back-to-school survey put the average parent's planned spend at $557 per child, flat year over year. Total spending is standing still, but technology use is splitting purchase behavior sharply. Deloitte found a correlation between the number of digital technologies a parent uses and how much they spend.
The result is the "hyper value-seeker," and brands have responded. JCPenney stepped up marketing around price guarantees, while American Eagle and Target diversified the influencers they work with. Grade and high school spending is flat, but college spending is set to rise, per NRF data, which is why Urban Outfitters aired its first connected TV commercial in August. "All Together Now" leans into campus life and gameday excitement. For a closer look at how these shoppers behave, see 'Hyper Value-Seekers' Reshaped Back-to-School Marketing — One in Three Parents Now Uses Four-Plus Savings Tactics.
As consumers chase value, AI has become a price comparison tool. Notably, Epsilon's "2026 back-to-school spending trends" report found no difference in AI usage between parents of grade and high school students and parents of college students.
Price comparison leads the use cases at 53%. Nearly half use AI to find deals, 37% for initial research, 33% to generate a shopping list and 32% to compare products and brands.
For marketers hoping to act on this, two pain points remain. First, measuring success on platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini is unclear. Guidelines from the Interactive Advertising Bureau found little standardization among the methodologies and results of more than 20 AI vendors. Second, the role of user-generated content in AI visibility, especially on YouTube and Reddit, is still an open question. Where shoppers go to verify AI recommendations is part of the answer; see Half of U.S. Shoppers Verify AI Recommendations on Reddit — More Than They Trust Family.
As Gen Alpha enters its teenage years, it has become a demographic of growing interest. Like their millennial parents, they are growing up online, but their internet is filled with short-form video, AI and influencers rather than chatrooms. Gen Alpha is the first AI-native generation.
Parents have tremendous influence over the brand preferences of their household and children, but the relationship runs both ways. According to HarrisX and Allison Worldwide data, 91% of parents with teenagers say their children influence their own brand likes and dislikes, making kids the biggest factor in parental brand affinity. Social media remains the primary way teens discover and interact with brands, and TikTok is the top platform for teenage girls at 42%.
All three point the same way: consumers who use AI spend more. That makes whether your brand appears inside AI answers a revenue question, not a visibility vanity metric. For AI to surface your product accurately in a price comparison, pricing, availability and specifications need to be published in structured, machine-readable form. And because parents and teens shape each other's preferences, creator casting should address both layers, with separate channels for each but one brand message translated into each audience's language.
Deloitte's survey shows a correlation between the number of digital technologies used and spend, without asserting cause. Adding AI to the toolkit of parents who already use social and search corresponded to a $206 increase in planned spend per child.
Per Epsilon, price comparison leads at 53%, followed by finding deals (nearly half), initial research (37%), generating a shopping list (33%) and comparing products and brands (32%).
Not in any standardized way. IAB guidelines found little standardization among the methodologies and results of more than 20 AI vendors.
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