Will the Recession Doom the Last Sunday Blue Laws? Interesting… I was just thinking over the weekend, that since Westfield mall is cutting back mall hours, that it might also work to go back to stores having limited hours on Sundays. I remember as a child that downtown stores were not open on Sundays generally, except once a month for a special sale. Reducing the number of hours that people work is one way to save. 

Sunday Blue laws are still in effect in some areas that ban the sale of liquor on Sundays. 

“States realize that consumers will migrate to a place where they can buy what they want. And whatever their reasons are for not wanting to sell on Sunday, these states realize they’re paying a price for it in foregone tax revenues. So once the economy goes bad, then the cost of their policies are apparent to them.” – David Laband

Being able to shop and buy what you want when you want is a great thing – otherwise there wouldn’t be 24 hour grocery stores, but if the post office wants to reduce the number of days it offers home delivery, then why stores reducing their hours could not be far behind. When business is good, hours increase. When it is bad – they decrease… Some restaurants do this – they may close early depending on how many customers they have at a certain hour.

Reducing the hours that stores are open will work in various ways. If a store doesn’t have much direct competition and closes because of lack of business then no one really suffers, except the odd customers or two who needs something during off peak hours. If there is more competition in the area and one store remains open because their competitor does, yet both don’t really reap profits, then they may both end up being losers and the stores could ultimately close.

France has some opposition to Sunday shopping. It would increase revenue, but much like the blue laws, French Sunday shopping opponents believe that having the shops open on Sundays would make a move toward the seven day workweek.

I don’t know many people who only have Sunday to do their shopping. Even when major stores like department stores were closed on Sundays there were still drug stores, grocery stores and restaurants open. Sunday was reserved for family time.

Actually who spends quality time shopping? Hardly anyone is going shopping anymore to buy things that they don’t need. In order to preserve the choices that we have as consumers, having a store with fewer hours would be a good thing because then that could mean that more stores will still be in business.