Originally published in Entrepreneur

By Sean Claessen

It’s that magical time of year, the back-to-school season when retailers fall all over each other to give you the biggest, best sales and deepest discounts on No. 2 pencils, reams of paper, and anything else that can be loosely linked to school.

It’s a fight worth fighting — consumers are expected to spend more than $80 billion on back-to-school and back-to-college shopping this year and it’s also the unofficial kick-off to the most critical shopping period for retailers.

From now through to the end of the calendar year it’s a race to capture all the money pouring out of shoppers’ wallets. Back-to-school, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the holidays, combine to represent a significant portion of a retailer’s overall year. These are shopping events that will separate the winners from the losers, those who earn an A+ or an F.

Yet, in the age of Amazon and Uber, retailers are using the same old tired strategies to lure you in: the concentrated sale with big red signs promising bigger discounts than the other guy, ratcheting each other into greater and greater margin erosion.

But what if I told you that you could actually make more money by doing away with these public giveaways in favor of addressing remaining customer pain points? We surveyed consumers to pinpoint where their retail experiences weren’t meeting their expectations, given the importance of each moment in the retail ribbon. What we found is a virtual treasure trove of opportunity.

Read the full article at Entrepreneur.com.

Sean Claessen is Executive Vice President at Bond Brand Loyalty.