Online shopping: Recently we prefer to store in the evening
Digitec Galaxus has evaluated purchases over the past three years - and found that online purchases are increasingly made in the evening hours.
The pandemic has changed our consumer habits: We now prefer to store online after 9 pm. In the past, we often did our shopping quickly before the end of the day. There are big differences in shopping times between the sexes and generations.
The Corona pandemic is largely over, what has remained are new habits. In the last two years, for example, many have discovered how convenient and inexpensive it is to shop online. Those who store online are now doing so later in the day. This is shown by an analysis of all purchases at Digitec and Galaxus in 2019, 2021 and in the months of March and April 2022.
The latest sales figures show that we are now less likely to do our online shopping quickly between 4 and 5 p.m. - in other words, just before the end of work and the commute. That was still the norm before Covid-19. Instead, we store more often in the evening, especially between 9 and 10 p.m.. And increasingly also before dinner - after all, thanks to widespread home office options, we now have the time to do this.
At the same time, Monday is no longer the most popular day for online shopping: we now prefer to store at digitec and Galaxus on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Fridays have also become less important for online retailing. And because we have already completed our errands in the evening during the week, we have time for other things on the weekend.
The trend toward online shopping in the evening goes hand in hand with the shift to mobile shopping: In April 2022, Digitec Galaxus customers made more purchases on their cell phones than on their computers for the first time.
The hour between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. is now the most popular time for errands at digitec and Galaxus in all Swiss-speaking regions. The sales figures also indicate that many residents of German-speaking Switzerland eat their evening meal earlier than the French-speaking and Ticino-speaking regions: the shopping slump comes earlier, but the German-speaking Swiss have more time for their online purchases from 8 p.m. onwards. Conversely, in Latin Switzerland, the lunch break is reserved more for eating and relaxing than for shopping.
