Late night shopping popular amongst UK consumers

Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - 11:34 by Simon Crisp

A new report has shown that a third of people in the UK shop online in the early hours of the morning, between 12am and 4am, according to PCR.

These late night sprees are not as uncommon as you might think, with respondents to the Give As You Live study revealing that they tend to do most of their afterhours shopping on a Saturday.

Incredibly, about one in every 20 online purchases made last year in the UK was completed during this period of the night, predominantly by people aged between 35 and 44. So indulging in shopping online when lots of people are asleep is something that middle-aged consumers tend to prefer over their younger and older counterparts.

So why are people browsing the web and looking for bargains well after the sun has gone down? Well the most common reason stated by those questioned was sleeplessness, while about a tenth of respondents said that they shopped at this time while inebriated.

Just five per cent of respondents said that being woken up by their kids meant that they had time to shop online late at night, indicating that there are lots of different reasons behind the emergence of this habit amongst consumers in the UK.

The benefit of e-commerce sites is that people can get online and use them whenever they like, or indeed, whenever life allows them the opportunity.

Late night shopping has also, doubtlessly, been made easier to accomplish, thanks to smartphones and tablets, as it is simple to reach over and grab your portable device from your bed side table to make a quick purchase, even after the lights have gone out. Presumably, this trend will develop further as people in the UK adopt a 24 hour lifestyle.