Eid shopping: a night out

People throng the shopping scene late at night. With time, the purchasing patterns of people are changing. Photo: Rashed Shumon

Times are changing, so are habits and tastes. Well-to-do people and busy executives do not find time to gather at the shopping malls during the day time. But they have found a way to still meet their shopping needs; they shop at night.
With changes to the economy and booming shopping malls, the purchasing patterns of people are also changing.
The queues of customers at the shops and a long tailback of private cars even at midnight also indicate that the purchasing power of people is increasing.
It is more visible when a sales girl of a store at Bashundhara City said that she was tired of working into midnight at the cash counter. “I stood here at 10 in the morning and now it is 12:15am. How is it possible? Customers are still coming in and I have to serve them. At the same time, I have to go home soon so that I can come early to work the next day.”
The rush of customers is so high that the salespersons are finding it difficult to cope with the situation, she added.
During the daytime, customers from all echelons of society throng the market, but at night, only selective customers are seen.
At night, most customers are the executives from different public and private enterprises, she says. Couples are also more prominent later in the day, especially the newlyweds, she adds.
The changing economic landscape of the country is prominent at this time of the evening. Even a few years ago, it was unusual for the cashier to be open in the middle of the night. These are sights and sounds of the changing economic scene.
Raquib Ahmed, an executive at a private commercial bank, said he came to Bashundhara City at night to purchase a few clothing items for his family as he was busy at work all day. He was waiting with a cousin for their car that was stuck in a long queue of vehicles at the exit.
“Shopping at night is handy for us. We can check out the merchandise available at the stores with no work-related tension or stress.”
“I bought punjabis T-shirts and a couple of shirts today,” he adds.
The joy of going to a shopping mall is that everything is available under one roof, customers say.
Demand for T-shirts, men's shirts and punjabis is the highest, says Mohammad Rahat, a shopkeeper at a clothing store in the mall.
At midnight, the rush of customers is not so high, but there are few window shoppers, he says. “The customers who come to the mall at night almost always come with an intention to make a purchase.”
At daytime, there is a large population of window shoppers who do not buy anything, he says. They just browse through the shops to see what is available.
“The work load is also low at night, as only selective customers show up,” Rahat says. “We are bound to serve the customers whenever they come.”
The changing shopping patterns have made life easier for the salespersons. “Now, there is no need to bargain to agree on a final price as prices are fixed,” he says.
“Customers can walk in and check out the price tags of goods on shelves before deciding to make a purchase. It has reduced our work load.”
Nizam Shahed, another shopkeeper at a clothing store, agreed. He says there is a rush of customers who will head back to their villages to spend the Eid day, as well as from the city customers.
They are coming in whenever they are free, he says. The time to shop before Eid is running out fast and as a result, “more and more people are dashing to the malls.”
The rush of midnight shoppers will continue till the night when the Eid moon is sighted, he says.
With Eid just around the bend, the flow of late-night shoppers in increasing, says Mohammad Shahed, who is working at a shop in the mall under a contract. He will work for 40 days till the countdown to Eid in return for Tk 7000. Shahed is a computer science diploma student at a university in Dhaka.
He says shop-owners have hired many students and part time employees to help with the work load on the permanent employees.
He has no plans to go to his village home to celebrate Eid with his family this year. He says sales will soar as Eid nears.
“I worked as a temporary employee last year as well. I enjoy the job.”
Shop owners prefer to employ part-time university students as they are smart and can handle customers well, he says.

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