Drunken Debauchery Benefits Retailers’ Ecommerce Solutions

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January 6, 2012
By the ZippyCart Content Team

There are several activities people engage in while drunk that are generally looked down upon like drunk driving, dialing or texting. However, ecommerce retailers are loving a new activity that is swiftly gaining popularity: drunk online shopping.

According to a recent study in the UK, many respondents admitted to logging into their favorite ecommerce websites and making purchases. This trend has been called “BUI” or buying under the influence. For some shoppers, late night plastered purchases result in a “Heart’s Greatest Hits” CD, like one woman confessed in Times, but sometimes they are more detrimental to one’s bank account than an unwanted addition to your music library.

For example Chris Tansey, an accountant from Australia, recalled his $10,000 drunken online shopping purchase: a motorcycle trip around New Zealand. Although the trip was fun, Tansey said in an email to the Times, “The hang-ups of spending your hard-earned cash are so far removed from your life when you’ve had a bottle of wine.”

Retailers are far from ignorant to this trend with sites like eBay and The Guilt Groupe reporting a noticeable spike in consumer purchases in the late hours of the night. eBay has the highest traffic daily between 6:30 pm and 10:30 pm in each time zone. Vice president for mobile for eBay, Steve Yankovich, commented on drinking being a possible factor for the volume of shoppers between those times:

“I mean, if you think about what most people do when they get home from work in the evening, it’s decompression time. The consumer’s in a good mood.”

Many ecommerce marketers have taken advantage of consumers late-night behaviors and have adjusted their promotions accordingly. An array of promotional emails are sent out after dinner time and well-into the night. High-end flash sale site The Gilt Groupe says it plans on adding more deals that begin at 9 pm. Although retailers will not say if they specifically target intoxicated shoppers, judging by the timing of promotional emails we can draw our own conclusions.

Additionally, mobile shopping apps and one-click checkout options that many retailers offer for convenience have contributed to the spike in Alcohol-fueled purchases. This is considered a problem to some as it is well-known that alcohol reduces working memory, which means shoppers may not have the cognitive clarity to make rational judgments and think through purchases.

However, many people don’t see BUI as a particularly concerning habit, but rather a fun game full of surprise. Many of these shoppers don’t regret their post-bar buying behaviors, but actually enjoy the surprise gifts that show up at their door several days after the fact.

Whether it is a problem or not, perhaps In Icon’s Steve Jobs action figure sales will benefit from this phenomenon.