Back-to-School Deals Help Shoppers Save Time This Fall

REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 4, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Parents are paying more attention to prices this year as they stock up on their kids' back-to-school supplies, according to a recent Bing survey. Eighty-seven percent of people surveyed said they will check multiple stores and websites to compare prices this year, with the majority of parents (52 percent) admitting price outranks value, style and brand when it comes to making back-to-school purchasing decisions. The survey also indicates that many parents will decrease spending altogether. Forty-four percent of parents said they will recycle their children's clothes rather than purchase new ones this year.

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Of the college students surveyed, their  back-to-school decisions would make any parent proud. With their parents tightening purse strings and changing their shopping lists, students also plan on exercising prudence on back-to-school spending this year. Sixty percent of student respondents claim they would not buy a new computer without a trusted friend's opinion first. In addition, 49 percent plan to actually spend their back-to-school budget on school supplies this year while just 10 percent plan to put their cash toward back-to-school partying instead.

Bing, the Decision Engine from Microsoft Corp., recognizes the growing need for people to save time and money on back-to-school shopping this season. Here are some of the specific tools Bing offers to help this back-to-school season:

• Bing Shopping. Available at http://www.bing.com/shopping, the Bing Shopping experience makes organizing items by category more intuitive by providing users with 28 distinct shopping categories and more than 300 subcategories. Whether kids are looking for the perfect outfit for the first day of school or the school supplies that will make their friends envious, Bing is the all-in-one online shopping resource to help save you time and money.
• Bing for Mobile deals. Available on mobile devices at m.bing.com, Bing for Mobile deals aggregates the top deals in your area, including deals from Groupon, LivingSocial and Tippr, and gives people access to more than 200,000 local coupons in more than 14,000 cities in the U.S. Parents can save time and money and feel more confident about their purchasing decisions by searching for daily deals, nearby deals, keywords or deals by category. Bing for Mobile deals was designed to help stretch budgets, keeping more money in people's pockets and enabling students to expand their back-to-school shopping lists.
• Bing Social. Bing Shopping not only provides product comparisons and reviews, it also allows you to share your shopping lists with your Facebook friends so you can rest assured your items are friend-approved before making the big purchase. Students who care most about getting their friends' approval on products can also share the deals they find directly from Bing for Mobile deals.

Whether they are trying to save time and money or make the smartest back-to-school purchases, Bing connects people to the content they want in a new and visually interesting way.

About the Survey

The survey was conducted online with a random sample of 1,027 men and women, ages 18 and older, who have a child going back to school this fall. All surveyed men and women are members of the Impulse Research proprietary online panel. In addition, a subset of 362 students was surveyed for additional results. The Impulse Research proprietary online panel has been carefully selected to closely match U.S. population demographics, and the respondents are representative of American men and women, ages 18 and older.

Research was conducted in July 2011. The overall sampling error rate for this survey is +/- 3 percent at the 95 percent level of confidence.

About Bing

At Bing, we believe that as the Internet evolves, so should search. Bing takes the world's information and services on the Web and makes them more useful by delivering an innovative and intuitive search experience, visually organizing results and bringing in social signals from your friends. The end result? A search engine that takes you from searching and finding to searching and doing. Try it for yourself at Bing.com.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

SOURCE Microsoft Corp.