TheJakartaPost

Please Update your browser

Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.

Jakarta Post

SHOP the night away

After a long working week at the office and a couple of hours hanging out with friends on a Friday night, the choice is usually clear for 33-year-old Hans Yanuardi: A date with his mattress and pillows But last Friday night, his usual date had a tough competitor: A midnight sale at South Jakarta's Senayan City, luring shoppers with heavily discounted goods

Anissa S. Febrina (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Sat, June 27, 2009

Share This Article

Change Size

SHOP the night away

After a long working week at the office and a couple of hours hanging out with friends on a Friday night, the choice is usually clear for 33-year-old Hans Yanuardi: A date with his mattress and pillows

But last Friday night, his usual date had a tough competitor: A midnight sale at South Jakarta's Senayan City, luring shoppers with heavily discounted goods. A sale that, for Hans anyway, came just at the right time.

"I haven't bought a single new shirt in three months," said the legal officer at a Japanese manufacturing company. "I have to choose between buying shirts or shoes because my other expenses are rising."

So he sacrificed a good night's rest to join the crowds, staking his claim to trousers at a 70 percent discount and shirts at half price, playing his part in a retail performance that refuses to let the city sleep.

Welcome to the new era of shopping, where you can shop not only until you drop, but until dawn.

Although, in Hans' case, it was actually only until midnight.

"The Senayan City Summer Sale is a special program where our tenants from various international brands offer an attractive bargain for visitors," Senayan City marketing director Very Y. Setiady said in explanation of the three days of "midnight shopping", running from 9 p.m. until the clock struck 12.

It was the mall's sixth such event in the past couple of years. And each time, tenants reported an increase in sales of between 20 percent and 26 percent, the mall's chief operating officer Sim Tang Chuan said.

Some say it's an innovative way to boost sales during times of economic crisis, while others call it a marketing gimmick. But for the still eager-to-consume members of the middle to upper classes, like Hans, it's a bargain one just shouldn't - or rather cannot afford to - miss.

And there were plenty who weren't going to - groups of women, families with babies, teenagers, you name it. Pretty much any who could rustle up some money for shopping crowded into the mall where it could have been any time of day - the clock seemed to have stopped ticking.

The atmosphere builds a sort of contagious euphoria, even among those who aren't really doing much shopping.

"Actually, for our boutiques, although there is an increase of visitors during midnight sales like this, most of them are only window shopping," said Warsi, a shop assistant at Jade boutique, which sells clothes imported from the United States.

"Sales did go up by about 10 percent the last time there was a midnight shopping event, but it didn't seem to match the increase in the number of visitors," she added.

Although the overall story is that it is an effort to boost sales during an economic crisis, every shop tells a different story.

A Calvin Klein boutique reported its sales doubled at events such as this and smaller shops no increase at all, with department stores such as Topshop and Debenhams seeming to reap the biggest profit from the extended shopping hours.

Despite the hour, people were queuing at cashiers and the glut of people on elevators was like that of traffic in main streets at peak hour.

And who says women are the shopping maniacs? You just had to pop by the men's departments to see that men of all ages are as enthusiastic about grabbing a bargain as their female counterparts.

The promotional strategy of extended shopping hours, known as midnight shopping in the marketing speak, is a current trend in Indonesian retail. The first reported event was held in 2005 by Hypermart Lippo Karawaci, Marketing Club mailing list moderator Ronald Sipahutar said.

Since then, other malls have picked up on the trend and created their own similar events. And the trick seems to have worked.

In June and July this year alone, at least two shopping malls are holding such events under the umbrella of the Jakarta Great Sale.

No one really knows where the roots of this current midnight shopping trend lie, but it is not unlike the last-minute Christmas shopping tradition so familiar in countries like the US.

Nowadays, retailers like Wal-Mart or Gap have taken to holding these sales on days such as Black Friday - the Friday after Thanksgiving - when mall visitors are reportedly the highest.

"You could say it is a trend," said M. Sochirin, the head of the Indonesian Shopping Center Association steering committee said. "As usual, if something like this works the first time, many will tend to follow it."

He said by extending shopping hours another three or four hours, tenants can enjoy a sales increase of around 20 percent on regular opening hours.

At the same time, any extra operating costs are usually subsidized by the mall operator, as Central Jakarta's Plaza Indonesia has done for the past two years.

"If one extends the opening time by four hours, for example, the operating costs will increase by 30 percent," Sochirin explained. "But it's in a way covered by the marketing budget of the mall operator."

For mall operators and tenants, at a time when people are tightening their belts a bit, a 20 percent increase means something.

However, despite the gloomy economic look, surveys show that consumer spending in Indonesia is actually staying positive.

An AC Nielsen survey conducted in seven cities across the country revealed that consumer spending had grown by 7.4 percent by the end of April and is expected to accelerate with the easing of the liquidity crisis.

Compared with traditional markets and independent outlets, modern retail is growing the fastest with a reported 13.4 percent increase compared with last year's sinking revenues.

With consumer spending being the country's only reliable GDP contribution over the past 12 years, even economists are now suggesting that any kind of retail sales boosts activities.

From the consumers' perspective, it's simply a matter of making the most of the combination of a good bargain and a novel experience.

As Prasidhya Prameswari, a 27-year-old owner of an independent clothing shop, put it, "I just want to see what it's like".

Unlike Hans and his fellow eager shoppers, Icha, as the woman asked to be called, was only out window-shopping and caf*-hopping.

And for the enthusiastic shoppers, it's just another part of city life.

According to sociologist Harvey Molotch, in displaying their consumption aspirations and accomplishments, individuals exhibit to one another and confirm for themselves hey belong to particular groups.

No matter how often certain groups campaign for less consumptive behavior, the love of shopping is simply an inevitable phenomenon.

"The bulk of provisioning," writer Daniel Miller says of buying goods at a shopping center, is connected to "an ongoing relationship, an underlying constancy complemented by a mood, a compromise, a smile, a punishment gesture, a comfort, all the minutiae that make up the constantly changing nuances of a social relationship".

Put more succinctly: "Objects are social relations made durable."

And the popularity of extended shopping hours seems to illustrate just how true that is.

{

Your Opinion Matters

Share your experiences, suggestions, and any issues you've encountered on The Jakarta Post. We're here to listen.

Enter at least 30 characters
0 / 30

Thank You

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. We appreciate your feedback.