Suchergebnisse

A significant portion of the population stayed, and continue to stay, at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With more people staying home, online shopping increased along with trips related to pickups and deliveries. To gain a better understanding of the change in retail purchases and related travel, UC Berkeley researchers compared pre-pandemic shopping to pandemic-related shifts in consumer purchases in the greater Sacramento area for nine types of essential and non-essential commodities (e.g., groceries, meals, clothing, paper products, cleaning supplies). In May 2020, the research team resampled 327 respondents that participated in the 2018 Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) household travel survey. The 2018 SACOG survey collected responses over a rolling six-week period from April to May 2018 and asked residents about their motivations for, attitudes toward, and ease of use of online shopping. They were also were asked about the number of e-commerce purchases made, and the number of deliveries and pickups made from those e-commerce purchases for each commodity type. In addition, respondents also reported changes (less or more) in their behavior from a typical week in January or February 2020 (prior to the COVID-19 pandemic) for: 1) tripmaking, e-commerce purchases, and delivery and pick up frequencies; 2) purchase sizes; 3) distances traveled; and 4) modes used for in-person trips. This brief highlights findings from an analysis on changes in frequency of purchases, deliveries and pickups, and order sizes.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about dramatic shifts in travel, including shopping trips. We investigated changes in eshopping for food and non-food items by supplementing an April to May 2018 household travel survey (n=3,956 households) conducted by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) with a May 2020 follow-on panel survey (n=313 households) during one week early in the pandemic. Results demonstrate that impacts from added pickups and deliveries in the SACOG region during the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic were limited and did not overwhelm curb management at retail, restaurant, and grocery establishments. Results also show that during the pandemic e-commerce tended to replace non-food shopping trips, but complemented restaurant and grocery trips. However, Forty percent of the sample households — predominantly lower income and/or older populations — still shopped only in-store for food while more affluent households appear to have isolated themselves from virus exposure through more extensive online shopping. We recommend extending the forms of accepted payment for online shopping and reducing fees and markups based upon payment method to reduce barrier to online shopping for those with limited resources. We identify possible consequences (e.g., more vehicle miles traveled and higher demand for curbside parking) if e-commerce food purchasing continues to grow post-pandemic or if in-person retail shopping returns to normal.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about dramatic shifts in travel, including shopping trips. We investigated changes in eshopping for food and non-food items by supplementing an April to May 2018 household travel survey (n=3,956 households) conducted by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) with a May 2020 follow-on panel survey (n=313 households) during one week early in the pandemic. Results demonstrate that impacts from added pickups and deliveries in the SACOG region during the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic were limited and did not overwhelm curb management at retail, restaurant, and grocery establishments. Results also show that during the pandemic e-commerce tended to replace non-food shopping trips, but complemented restaurant and grocery trips. However, Forty percent of the sample households — predominantly lower income and/or older populations — still shopped only in-store for food while more affluent households appear to have isolated themselves from virus exposure through more extensive online shopping. We recommend extending the forms of accepted payment for online shopping and reducing fees and markups based upon payment method to reduce barrier to online shopping for those with limited resources. We identify possible consequences (e.g., more vehicle miles traveled and higher demand for curbside parking) if e-commerce food purchasing continues to grow post-pandemic or if in-person retail shopping returns to normal.