There’s a reason why your mum always told you not to stay up late. Because the longer you stay awake, the more money you’re going to spend by being a consumer.

Remember Citibank’s “The City Never Sleeps” tagline? It suggests that Citibank will serve its cardholders round-the-clock. But that’s not all. It also says why sleep when you can stay up and do all sorts of fun things with your credit card all night long. It made not sleeping cool, and getting into debt hip.

Even new products – like RedBull – were introduced to cash-in on the Sleep-Less phenomenon that swept across the cities of the world. Now there are probably hundreds of sleep-depriving. caffeine-loaded  drinks that are discreetly labelled as ‘energy drinks’.

The recreating, eating, shopping, partying and what-have-you till the wee hours of the morning presented businesses with a goldmine. The less we consumers sleep, the more money businesses make.

So it this just a case of businesses meeting consumer demands or is your friendly neighbourhood 24-hour mamak stall taking advantage of your insomnia?

Fine, we all could do with a midnight snack once in a while. But what about 24-hour gyms? Are people seriously pumping iron at 4 in the morning? Lately, hypermarkets have started extending their operation hours to 1am. Do we really have that urgent of a need for potato bread at that hour?

And that’s why they say “don’t sleep on it”, because if you do, then you are going to miss out of the bargain, deal or offer.

Sleeping consumers are no good because they not only can’t be sold to, but also can’t be advertised to.

But I’d rather my consumer have a good night’s sleep so that I am not selling to a groggy, sleep-deprived person with an attention span of a wasp.

So go to sleep guys and wake up refreshed to another day of buying or selling; whichever it is that you do.