Driven to Shop?: Role of Transportation in Future Home Shopping

This study explores some of the transportation implications emerging from electronic home shopping and on-line commerce. It suggests that travel activities and travel patterns are likely to change as electronic commerce develops and as existing stores and commercial activities adjust to future competition from on-line commerce. The study illustrates some of the complex and unanticipated interactions that are likely to take place between the growth of new communication systems and transportation. In today’s retail markets, most goods are shipped to stores and people physically travel to stores to purchase goods. This tradition is likely to change with the growth of electronic home shopping, since many goods will be purchased on-line and consumers will not need to travel to shop. However, many items will require delivery to the home, and this may spur the expansion of home-delivery services. Other goods purchased on-line will require no physical distribution, and a new class of products, such as music CDs and software, is already being “shipped” electronically over broadband networks. Another impact of future electronic home shopping is the likely growth of entirely new types of retail venues, since it becomes easier to establish markets that bring together buyers and sellers who do not travel to meet, and without the movement of physical goods either. The shipping of goods takes place only after the transaction. All of these new market forms, which bring together electronically buyers, sellers, and goods, raise new issues for the study of transportation and communication interactions.