| Comment | It’s the chicken and egg scenario for me.
- people don’t go to shops because they think they’re closed at 6pm onwards
- shops don’t see footfall after 6 so don’t extend opening hours due to profitability concerns
What would need to happen would be a culture shift for city centre shops and for that to filter through to the population. Unfortunately I don’t see any stores taking the short term hit on finances to make that happen.
My wife is from abroad and had the same reaction as the OP.
To people from Asia it makes all the sense in the world to have shops open late, so you can go out after work and into the late night. Over there, you come home from work, rest a bit then head back out again.
However, they don’t have the pub/bar/drinking culture they have here.
I’ve had multiple people from abroad and who are born here say they won’t go near the city centre and prefer malls in the evenings and later on weekends because they just don’t want to deal with people in and out of bars/pubs.
Malls are different - they should be open later than even now. Shifts, fair hourly salaries for unsociable hours and strong advertising for later opening hours and free parking.
But of course, companies don’t want to pay their retail staff more than they have to.
Contrast to areas in Asia where there will be a queue of young people for any retail job on low salaries, with no welfare system to help them. |
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