E-Commerce and Mobility Trends During COVID-19

This chapter uses data from several sources, including health impact, mobility, and e-commerce transaction data to analyze shopping and mobility trends in the early months of the novel Coronavirus—COVID-19 pandemic. The analyses provide an overview of these trends in France, the UK, and the United States. The data, alongside a strategic review of other studies and sources, provide a picture of shopping and mobility during the pandemic. Shopping, and especially e-commerce, result in important, albeit difficult-to-predict transportation changes; thus, this chapter outlines a discussion of how the onset of the pandemic and the corresponding health restrictions might have impacted this relationship. We find that time spent at non-home locations decreased dramatically, while e-commerce transactions saw an increase. Immediately after public health restrictions were set in place, initial purchasing behaviors suggest some hoarding or stockpiling, followed by a clear increase in e-commerce transactions. Time spent at grocery locations decreased less than time spent at retail locations, which can be explained by the subsistence and maintenance nature of grocery shopping. Moreover, by June 2020, people in France and the United States were spending approximately the same amount of time in grocery locations as before the pandemic.