‘Drunk Shopping’ a Boon to Online Merchants

After those pesky laws discouraging drinking and driving became commonplace in most jurisdictions, retailers probably suffered heavily from the loss of the “half cut” demographic spending in their stores like… drunken sailors?

Alas, the rise of web shopping has once again opened the demographic of inebriated consumers to retailers once again, and the staid New York Times has profiled the happy, tipsy shoppers that often are surprised when their bounty of internet-gotten purchases arrives, having forgotten their acquisitions in the haze of a drunken hour.

Ohio woman Tiffany Whitten explains the enticement of racking up credit card points drunkenly on her smartphone. She says:

“I have my account linked to my phone, so it’s really easy… I was drunk and I bought [a phone cover], and I forgot about it, and it showed up in the mail, and I was really excited.”

Australian accountant Chris Tansey is one such boozy buyer, and he tells the Times of the time he once dropped ten large on a motorcycle tour while three sheets to the wind. Tansey says:

“The hang-ups of spending your hard-earned cash are so far removed from your life when you’ve had a bottle of wine,” Mr. Tansey said in an e-mail. The New Zealand trip was terrific, he said. But a pair of $3 sunglasses on eBay “turned out to be horrible fakes, with $17 of postage that I obviously didn’t see with beer goggles.”

Gilt Groupe president Andy Page urged responsible drunk shopping, but said retailers appreciate the lack of inhibition associated with drunk shopping:

“Post-bar, inhibitions can be impacted, and that can cause shopping, and hopefully healthy impulse buying.”

QVC, the home shopping channel on which trashed shoppers can go buckwild without even having to log on to the internet, also feels the drunk shopping love. SVP of multichannel programming and marketing at the channel, Doug Page, tells the Gray Lady that there is a significant uptick in sales of cosmetics and other women’s luxuries after arsenic hour:

“Call them girl treats — they seem to attract a really strong following once you get past dinnertime… You can probably come to your own conclusion as to what’s motivating her.”

Have you ever put the smackdown on your plastic after a few cocktails? Do you enjoy drunk shopping?

[Image: Shutterstock]