Shopping Under the Influence – Drunk on Amazon

Online shopping has never been faster, and more convenient, especially with Amazon. The slowest aspect of internet shopping is often (besides a bad connection) the decision-making process, and with Amazon, there is always a long list of similar products to choose from. This makes the purchasing decision even tougher, as we’re often bogged down with products, after product.  Enter booze — which apparently inhibits decision-making just enough to allow you to engage in more one-click shopping than you could hope for, or at least, regret it less in the morning. Get where I’m going with this? Oh yes, drunk Amazon shopping is a thing, and the tech and business newsletter, The Hustle, conducted a survey to prove it.

The Hustle surveyed more than 2,000 alcohol-drinking adults and found that on average, shoppers spent more than $400 per year on items bought when they were intoxicated. They also found that Amazon was the “drunk shopping” platform of choice. And Alexa has no inhibitions, making drunk shopping that much better.

Makes sense. Think back to the last drunk purchase you may have made. Everyone has their own stories of drunken regret. Blame it on the alcohol, right? In fact, just this weekend, I watched one of my friends buy pounds of Lucky Charm Marshmallows from Amazon off his Apple TV after one-too-many beers. All it took was another friend mentioning that Amazon sells them and less than three minutes later, the purchase was confirmed. How convenient.

The survey found that 85 percent of drunk shoppers use Amazon, followed by Ebay at 21 percent and Etsy at 12 percent.

It would be interesting to see if these companies took this data and started finding ways to further capitalize on e-commerce and drunk purchases. They could start using Google’s Recaptcha service to identify drunk shoppers like it identifies robots, and then start suggesting the items no one else would really buy sober, kind of like an alternative to a clearance section or the Nordstrom Rack of Amazon (as if you’ve ever bought anything from there while sober).

The survey also found that people mostly buy clothing when they’re drunk. This could mean big bucks for Instagram soon. They’ve recently implemented a feature called “Checkout” that allows users to purchase items directly from the app. So far, only a few brands have begun using the feature, but most of them are clothing brands like H&M and REVOLVE. Only time will tell if the app can compete with an e-commerce giant like Amazon. But drunk buys are a safe bet on Instagram.

If you’re ready to cash in on an e-commerce venture of your own, perhaps one that offers a sobriety test before users can click “buy”, make sure to get in touch with the attorneys at RM Warner Law to get your e-commerce venture up and running the right way.