NEW DELHI: Weekend rush in malls is not without reason as consumers splurge on fashion, entertainment, dining and electronics, resulting in nearly two-thirds of the weekly spend of urban consumers on Saturdays and Sundays.Looked another way, on an average, urban consumers spend Rs 6,700 during weekdays, while spending Rs 10,700 on weekends – resulting in a spending multiplier of 1.6 over the two days, when most of them are not at work.Expenditure on essentials, such as groceries and healthcare, are largely uniform across the week, a study by data outfit PRICE and Tata Sons on consumption pattern in top 100 cities showed.But when it comes to fashion, there is a clear spike, from Rs 529 on weekdays to Rs 1,075 at weekend. With more time at their disposal, entertainment, which could include movies, plays or a visit to the kids play area, sees a similar jump (Rs 662 from Rs 328), as is also the case with electronics (Rs 695 from Rs 350) and dining and food delivery (Rs 959 from Rs 525).The trend is, however, more pronounced in the six top metros – Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad – where the weekend spending multiplier is 1.65. The other 94 cities are not far behind at 1.55, although there are some outliers, such as coal hub Dhanbad, where weekend spend is actually lower (0.92).Western India leads with a weekend expenditure multiplier of 1.8, followed by South (1.5), central India (1.49) and north India (1.4). Income remains the most powerful differentiator of discretionary spending behaviour, as weekend spending multiplier rises steadily with income – from around 1.4 among individuals earning below Rs 25,000 a month to nearly 1.6 for those earning between Rs 25,001 and Rs 50,000 and 2.5 for those in the over Rs 1 lakh segment.The study also showed that consumption within these 100 cities, which houses less than a fifth of the country’s population, accounted for nearly one-third of all national consumption (Rs 74.5 lakh crore), and about 61% of all urban demand in 2025-26. These cities have seen an annual growth rate of 10.4% in household expenditure in the past decade, as compared to 8.5% nationally.With rising incomes and evolving lifestyles, an urban household in these 100 cities allocates two-thirds of its expenditure to services such as housing, transport and education, signalling “shift from subsistence to aspirational consumption”.