Transportation 31: 257–284, 2004

 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

A conceptual analysis of the transportation impacts

of B2C e-commerce

PATRICIA L. MOKHTARIAN
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Institute of Transportation Studies,
University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA (E-mail:
plmokhtarian@ucdavis.edu)

Key words: business-to-consumer e-commerce, e-commerce, shopping behavior, teleshopping,

transportation impacts of ICT

Abstract. This paper discusses, at a conceptual level, a number of issues related to the
evaluation of the transportation and spatial impacts of e-shopping. We review the comparative
advantages of store shopping and e-shopping, and conclude that neither type uniformly
dominates the other. We identify the building blocks of the shopping process, and note that
information and communications technologies are making possible the spatial and temporal
fragmentation and recombination of those elements. We analyze future shopping-related changes
in transportation as the net outcome of four different fundamental causes, that can be viewed
hierarchically: (1) changes in shopping mode share (i.e. shifts in the proportion of shopping
activities conducted through store shopping, e-shopping and other modes), keeping the volume
of goods purchased and per capita consumption spending constant; (2) changes in the volume
of goods purchased, keeping per capita consumption spending constant; (3) changes in per
capita consumption spending, independent of demographic changes; and (4) demographic changes.
Some factors result in reduced travel while others lead to increased travel. The combined outcome
of all factors does not appear to support any hope that e-shopping will reduce travel on net; to
the contrary there may be negative impacts due to increased travel, even if those impacts are
likely to be localized and/or small in magnitude for the most part. Thus, on the whole, we are
likely (with some exceptions) to see continued adoption of both store shopping and e-shopping.
Consumers will blend both forms as they conduct a sequence of shopping activities, and retailers
will blend both in marketing to and serving customers. Assessing the transportation impacts of
e-shopping – even in the short term, let alone the long term – presents some formidable
measurement challenges. Nevertheless, those challenges are worthy of our most creative efforts
at solution.

1. Introduction

If one were to rely solely on media reports, electronic commerce has enjoyed
a volatile history since erupting on the scene a few short years ago. Initially
hailed as a revolution, it attracted thousands of entrepreneurs and investors
eager to cash in on its promise. However, as with so many speculation fevers
before it, “many are called, but few are chosen” to succeed. With the bursting
of the dot.com bubble, “B2B” came to mean “back to basics”, and “B2C”
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became “back to college” for the erstwhile twenty-year-old millionaires.

Nevertheless, e-commerce continues to grow. For example, US Department
of Commerce figures (http://www.census.gov/mrts/www/current.html, accessed
August 22, 2003), based on a random sample of 11,000 retailers, show that
online retail sales in the US totaled about $28 billion in 2000 (0.9% of total
retail sales), $35 billion in 2001 (1.1% of total retail sales and an increase
of 22% over the previous year, despite the softening economy and the shock
of the September 11 terrorist attacks), and $43 billion in 2002 (1.3% of the
total and an increase of 26% over the previous year). Couclelis (2001) points
out that the DOC figures exclude categories such as travel and event tickets
– categories that are certainly relevant to assessing the impact of e-commerce
on travel – and hence these figures underestimate total online sales. 1
Indications are that e-commerce, in some form and at some level, is here
to stay – in many contexts it is quite clearly superior to the old way of doing
business. To urban planners, then, the impact of e-commerce on transporta-
tion is a relevant question. This paper addresses that question, narrowing the
focus to the business-to-consumer (B2C) segment of e-commerce. Although
the business-to-business (B2B) segment dominates e-commerce in terms of the
dollar value of transactions made, B2C remains important for its potential
impacts on urban travel and land use patterns.
To date, there is still little empirical data on the transportation impacts of
B2C e-commerce. Thus, we are rather short on answers at this stage. The
purpose of this paper is more to raise the questions than to provide the answers;
specifically to provide a conceptual framework from which to address the
questions. Failure to view a broader context may result in studies that fail to
ask the right questions, or omit some important questions that would materi-
ally alter our understanding of the results. Thus, in the spirit of the proverb
that “time spent sharpening the axe is not wasted”, it is hoped that spending
some time thinking about the key research issues will bear fruit in the form
of more useful information from well-designed studies.
The organization of this paper is as follows. Section 2 explores the
potential advantages of electronic shopping “versus” store shopping. Section
3 describes the various elements of the shopping process, and how informa-
tion and communications technology (ICT) is permitting those elements to
be spatially and temporally detached and reassembled in novel ways. Section
4 organizes the potential transportation impacts of e-shopping into four
hierarchical levels, and discusses each in turn. Section 5 draws on the previous
discussion to present some important issues facing research in this field, and
Section 6 offers some concluding remarks.
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2. Comparative advantages of e-shopping and store shopping

Before proceeding further, it is useful to define some terms. Electronic

commerce generally refers to the use of the Internet (or proprietary intranets)
to conduct commercial activities of various kinds, and as mentioned above
it can be partitioned into business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer
(B2C, or electronic retailing) segments. With respect to the B2C segment, a
relevant term that has previously appeared in the academic literature is
teleshopping. Teleshopping refers to the use of ICT to obtain information about
or purchase consumer goods: pre-Internet services such as home-shopping
channels on cable television, specialized early computer-based systems such
as the Minitel in France, and even telephone orders from a catalog mailed to
the home can be placed in this category. In this paper, I will use the term
e-shopping to refer to the segment of teleshopping that is Internet-based. Thus,
e-shopping basically refers to the B2C segment of e-commerce, but with a
focus on the set of activities – shopping – that are undertaken by the consumer.
There are two aspects to understanding the extent and nature of the travel
(or any other) impacts of e-shopping. Certainly a great deal can be learned
from studying the transportation impacts for those who adopt teleshopping.
For this purpose, samples of e-shoppers can be obtained and their travel
behavior analyzed (specific research issues are discussed further in Section
5). But to scale those impacts up to the urban transportation network level,
it is imperative to understand the extent and nature of the adoption of
e-shopping – for how many people will those transportation impacts apply?
Thus, before turning directly to the potential transportation impacts of
e-shopping, it is useful to review the comparative advantages of e-shopping
and store shopping (based on Underhill (2000) among others), as a basis for
understanding the circumstances under which each might be preferred.

2.1. Potential advantages of e-shopping

The adjective “potential” should be stressed, since some putative advantages

are either not yet fully realized (due to technological constraints or simply
to the early stage of diffusion), or apply only in some circumstances. Further,
some advantages may accrue at the expense of others. For example, it is
suggested (European Commission 2001) that the personalization a consumer
obtains from a particular retailer may raise barriers to switching and hence
obviate the benefits of widespread search and price comparisons. With those
caveats in mind, some advantages of e-shopping include:
• Unlimited selection: A Barnes and Noble superstore stocks 175,000 book
titles; Barnesand Noble.com boasts 3 million (Business Week, 1998) – and
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that is just a single Internet seller. Rather than being constrained by the stock
on hand at one physical location, the inventories of all Internet retailers
are available to the buyer.2
• Lower prices/search costs: Although reality has sometimes differed (e.g.,
Palmer 2000; Lal & Sarvary 1999), theory suggests that Internet retailers
will offer lower prices than their store-based counterparts, due to the lower
costs of search for the buyer (the ease of obtaining information will drive
prices down), and lower costs of market entry and operations for the seller
(Brynjolfsson & Smith 2000). In some cases the buyer avoids having to
pay sales taxes by purchasing through the Web (of course, the added costs
of delivery must be balanced against any savings in the purchase price).
With respect to search costs in particular, using automated shopbots
(Brynjolfsson & Smith 2001) or even manually, the Internet makes it simple
to compare prices on a broad geographical scale. Brynjolfsson and Smith
(2000, 2001) and others find that people do not always choose the lowest-
priced item from e-tailers, even for “undifferentiated” products such as
books and CDs. Rather, they suggest that factors such as brand loyalty,
habit, and trust in a given retailer (Jarvenpaa et al. 2000) continue to be
important – arguably (and ironically, in view of claims that the Internet
would “level the playing field”) even more important in the e-commerce
context, where the links among buyer, seller, and product are detached from
the physical cues afforded by a bricks-and-mortar store. Nevertheless,
price is generally still an important factor informing the purchase decision.
• Information: The Internet is a convenient storage medium for voluminous
information about a product, information that would not readily be avail-
able in stores.3 Some Web sites are structured to allow ready comparison
of a number of specific products along several relevant dimensions, through
automatic completion of a matrix (the columns representing the products
and the rows the comparison dimensions) as specific products from a given
class (e.g., digital cameras) are selected.
• Personalization: ICT is enabling the “mass customization” of information
and even products (music CDs, computers, automobiles) – tailored to the
individual’s demographic and preference characteristics, whether offered
voluntarily or obtained through unobtrusive tracking of browsing and
purchase patterns (Hof et al. 1998). The individual is often able to design
(and in the case of music CDs, create) her own product directly to her
own specifications. Greater consumer satisfaction is presumably the result.
• Convenience: As various ads have trumpeted, we can e-shop while naked.
More prosaically, we can do so while too sick to leave the house, at
3 a.m. when brick-and-mortar stores are closed, during a blizzard, while
at work or taking care of the children or traveling. In short, shopping is
freed from temporal and spatial constraints, and becomes possible “24/7”.
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• Speed: The Internet allows the shopper to rapidly assemble information from
numerous virtual stores, in a negligible fraction of the time it would take
to visit real stores in person (Brynjolfsson & Smith 2000).
It is suggested (e.g., European Commission 2001) that these advantages
are combining to place more power in the hands of consumers, resulting in
a shift from “supply push” to “demand pull” forms of marketing. On the
other hand, retailers will have new tools for advancing their agenda as well.
For example, Brynjolfsson and Smith (2001) point out that the Internet enables
personalization not only of the product, but also of its pricing, with e-tailers
able to charge based on an individual’s willingness to pay, predicted from
that individual’s historical behavior and demographic characteristics. Thus,
it is likely that there will continue to be a tug-of-war between retailers and
consumers.

2.2. Potential advantages of store shopping

The advantages of e-shopping may appear to be compelling, but they are

only one side of the picture. There are a number of dimensions on which
store stopping is competitive (Salomon & Koppelman 1988; Tauber 1972):
• Sensory information: Until virtual reality becomes more sophisticated and
more available, there is no good substitute for the ability to see, feel,
smell, taste, or manipulate a desired item – try out how it works, feel how
much it weighs, see how it looks on you, judge its size or color in a natural
environment rather than on a computer monitor. Naturally, this advantage
is more salient for some goods than for others, and non-existent for digital
or undifferentiated goods, or repetitively-purchased items.4
• Tangibility: A different but related issue is the tangibility, not of the goods
themselves, but of the shopping environment. As mentioned in Section
2.1, trust continues to be an important barrier to the adoption of e-shopping.
Many people are more comfortable doing business with a physical store that
has been in town for years, whose owner is visible in the community, than
with an unseen, unknown e-tailer who may be out of business tomorrow
(Steinfield & Whitten 1999).
• Immediate possession: With the notable exception of digital goods (a
category that is increasingly widening as technology improves, but that
will remain limited), store shopping generally has the advantage of instant
gratification. As Gould (1998, p. 151) comments, the travel time saved
by shopping from home must be balanced against “the offsetting time
spent waiting for home delivery.”
The remaining advantages of store shopping relate not to the final outcome
of acquiring a desired good, but to accompanying components of the shopping
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process. In many cases these aspects may be incidental to the main purpose
of purchasing an item, but in many other cases they may constitute the primary
incentive for the shopping activity. Thus, an analysis of shopping behavior that
focuses exclusively on the assumed goal of goods acquisition will inevitably
underestimate the appeal of store shopping.
• Social interaction: “Hanging out at the mall” is a well-known pastime for
groups of American teenagers. They are not the only ones for whom
shopping serves a social function, however (Vala-Haynes 2000; Chung
2002). Going shopping can be a deliberate choice to combat isolation for
those who live alone, especially if they also work at home (Gould & Golob
1997, found that home-based workers spent more time in out-of-home
shopping than did conventional workers). Even when isolation is not a
factor, many people enjoy the social aspect of store shopping: seeing and
being seen, flirting with the cashier, bargaining or simply passing the time
of day.
• Entertainment: Many researchers have commented that shopping is not
purely a maintenance activity, but possesses recreational overtones, to
varying degrees for different people and circumstances (e.g. Gould & Golob,
1998; Salomon & Koppelman 1988, 1992). Retail centers are increasingly
combining entertainment with shopping (Kaufman 1995). The Mall of
America in Bloomington, Minnesota (www.mallofamerica.com, accessed
August 22, 2003) is an extreme example, but on a smaller scale, any number
of malls provide entertainment opportunities such as theme restaurants,
virtual reality game arcades, carousel rides for children, or live music
performances. Bookstores are redefining themselves as places to buy coffee,
sample music, or listen to a children’s story hour in addition to their
traditional roles. All of these functions add value to the shopping experi-
ence (at least for some) beyond the purchase itself.
• Movement: Besides serving as an antidote to isolation, store shopping can
meet the need for motion. Mall designer Yaromir Steiner has a vested
interest in his belief that “people like to get out of the house” (Kaufman
1995, p. 72), but he is supported by a number of more detached observers
of travel behavior. Contrary to the conventional view that the demand for
travel is derived purely from the need to engage in activities that happen
to be spatially separated, recent research (e.g., Mokhtarian & Salomon 2001)
is confirming previous observations that travel has a positive utility, and
is sometimes desired for its own sake. It is likely that a number of shopping
trips are “invented” in order to “justify” (often subconsciously) an urge
simply to get out and go somewhere.
• Trip chaining: Many shopping trips are linked to trips for other purposes.
For example, Jou and Mahmassani (1997) found that about a third of
commuters studied in Dallas and Austin, Texas made at least one stop on
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the way home from work, and that nearly one-fifth of those stops were
for shopping. This can make the marginal cost of store shopping negli-
gible, and contribute to making store shopping the preferred alternative in
many instances (Gould 1998).

2.3. Implications for the adoption of e-shopping

The foregoing discussion makes it clear that the choice between store shopping
and e-shopping is not unambiguous. The relative advantages presented above
will take on different values in diverse situations, and will also be weighted
variously by different people and in diverse situations (Handy & Yantis 1997).
Further, Burke (1997) points out that store retailers will not be passively
watching the e-tailing phenomenon, but will be actively enhancing and pro-
moting their natural advantages, as well as narrowing the gap on their
disadvantages. Of course, he comments, e-tailers will be doing the same things.
Thus, an effort to model the adoption of e-shopping should account for all
the factors likely to affect the choice, should seek to identify segments of
the population that have distinct preferences among those factors, and should
be sensitive to differences across shopping contexts and changes across time.
There have been a few studies of the adoption of teleshopping, in most cases
based on hypothetical alternatives. Their results are of interest. Koppelman
et al. (1991), for example, identified a segment of people who disliked catalog
shopping, tended to see teleshopping as a similar form, and thus were unlikely
to consider teleshopping, at least in the context of shopping for appliances.
A composite of several studies (Tacken 1990; Gould & Golob 1997; Gould
et al. 1998; Burke 1998) indicates that the elderly, disabled, workers in dual-
income households, and single parents were most receptive to teleshopping
(specifically for groceries, in the Tacken and Burke studies). To the mobility-
and time-limited, Cairns (1996) adds two other segments of the population
likely to be early adopters of grocery teleshopping: those who like tech-
nology, and those who dislike shopping. These four segments may well be
generalizable to many e-shopping contexts. Finally, one recent study of actual
online shopping (Eastin 2002) found its frequency to be significantly and
positively influenced by four main factors: prior engagement in shopping
by telephone, a measure of self-confidence with respect to e-commerce
activities, perceived convenience, and the perceived financial benefit.

3. The shopping process and its fragmentation and recombination

So far, we have for convenience been referring to “shopping” as if it were a

single monolithic activity. In reality, of course, shopping is a process, com-
prising a set of distinct components linked together in a particular sequence
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that can vary from case to case (Peterson et al. 1997). Knowing the com-
ponents of the shopping process is important to understanding how e-shopping
will be adopted and what its travel impacts will be.
Most introductory textbooks on consumer behavior present a conceptual
model of the shopping process. Typical elements of the process include desire,
information gathering/receiving, trial/experience, evaluation, selection, trans-
action, delivery/possession, display/use, and return (see, e.g., Schiffman &
Kanuk 1987; Salomon & Koppelman 1988). Not all shopping instances will
involve every element; for example, information gathering and trial are
negligible to non-existent for many repeat purchases (except to the extent
that the purchase and usage itself constitute information gathering and trial
for the next purchase). Conversely, some elements may be accomplished
more than once in a given shopping instance. For example, one may gather
information about several members of a category of interest, try several
“models” of the item, reject all of those, and return to the information-
gathering stage.
In a conventional store shopping scenario, many of these components
occur at the same location on a single visit. Specifically, information gathering,
trial, evaluation, selection, transaction, and possession often occur at a single
place and time. How is the Internet changing this?
Couclelis (2000) notes that a typical outcome of new ICTs is the frag-
mentation of formerly holistic activities, and their recombination in new ways.
For example, the activity “work” used to occur in a single time window at a
single location. “Leisure” used to occur in a different time window and a
different location. Now, telecommuters and mobile workers can detach the
work activity both from its traditional time and its traditional place, and
reconstitute it as a series of work episodes occurring at a variety of times
and places, interspersed and sometimes collocated with leisure activities
(checking e-mail on vacation, conducting business by mobile phone while
watching one’s daughter’s soccer game).
We can observe similar changes with the shopping process. Shopping used
to occur mainly in stores during well-defined non-work periods (lunch hours,
evenings, and weekends); now it can be conducted while at work or at home,
in a car or on a plane, interspersed with other activities. Thus, ICT is broad-
ening the options for many of the elements listed above. Consider:

• Desire: Underhill (2000, p. 56) wryly (if hyperbolically) notes, “if shoppers
suddenly ceased to buy on impulse, believe me, our entire economy would
collapse.” E-tailers are actively searching for new ways to stimulate desire.
Banner ads on web sites were an early approach, although they have not
proven to be especially effective (Neuborne & Hof 1998). Customized
e-mail or web-based suggestions and discounts based on one’s recent
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purchase history or stated interests are currently in vogue. One can listen
to a new song over an Internet radio service and immediately click to buy
the CD. Mobile commerce (m-commerce) applications extend the possi-
bilities even further, to “location-based marketing” (The Economist, October
11, 2001): pass near a department store on the way to somewhere else,
and receive a mobile phone message that the suit you tried on and regis-
tered your interest in last week is now on sale.
• Information gathering/receiving: As indicated earlier, an important advan-
tage of Internet-based shopping can be the ability to acquire and filter
large quantities of information about a desired item or class of items, in a
short time. The consumer may actively acquire information, may initiate
a request to automatically receive information meeting certain parameters
(“notify me when the price drops below $500”), or may receive unso-
licited information.
• Trial/experience: This is generally still a limitation of e-shopping compared
to store shopping, but technology is always pushing the envelope. Download
audio or video samples before buying that CD or DVD. Practice using a
simulated version of that digital camera. Give your measurements to a
clothing e-tailer, and establish a virtual fitting room, where you can see how
that particular jacket would look on you from any angle. Place your hand
in a virtual reality glove, and feel those peaches.
• Evaluation: Also as mentioned earlier, a number of web sites have explicit
comparison capabilities, permitting the side-by-side evaluation of a number
of products in a given class, along the same dimensions.
• Transaction: The ability to complete transactions between a spatially-
separated seller and buyer has been around for a long time. While the two
basic transaction modes of debit (subtracting the purchase price from a
pre-established account balance) and credit (creating a debt that is repaid
later) have not changed, new ways of activating each mode are emerging.
Highway tolls are collected electronically when the dashboard-mounted
transponder passes under a reader. Cost-effective ways of collecting micro-
payments (amounts ranging from a few cents to a few dollars) are being
developed, such as using the mobile phone to make deductions from a
pre-paid account.
• Delivery/possession: Goods that primarily contain information are increas-
ingly available in digital form and in these cases can be delivered
electronically, requiring no travel whatsoever. Examples are well-known:
software, music, photographs, movies, news, books.
• Display/use: A physical item is normally displayed or used in the same form
in which it was purchased. With information goods, however, ICT has
broken apart those two elements: such items are often acquired through ICT
but then converted to a physical platform for use. Music may be downloaded
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to a hard drive but then burned onto a CD for maximum portability.

A large technical report may be e-mailed, but then printed off by the
recipient.
• Return: E-merchants are seeking ways to make returns easier, thereby
lowering one barrier to increased e-shopping. Rather than requiring the
customer to repackage the item for mailing, make a special trip to a post
office, and pay for shipping, e-merchants are partnering with bricks-and-
mortar establishments to offer more convenient options (Aoyama 2001):
returning the rented video to the neighborhood Starbucks Coffee (Mount
2000), returning the ill-fitting garment to the merchant’s affiliated store.
Together with the new alternatives for accomplishing each shopping
component, ICT is, secondly, permitting the components to be detached and
reassembled (especially spatially but also temporally) in new ways. Couclelis
(2001) offers a potentially useful typology of shopping patterns, by simpli-
fying the process into three stages – before, purchase, and after – and two
shopping mode choices for each stage – local or remote. The result is 2 3 = 8
possible patterns, and, as she notes (p. 10), “Some of these patterns identify
particular kinds of shoppers: the traditional shopper (local/local/local), the
cybernaut (remote/remote/remote), the good citizen (remote/local/remote)
and the free rider (local/remote/local).”

4. Potential travel impacts of e-shopping

To date, few empirical studies of the transportation impacts of e-shopping –

or even older forms of teleshopping, for that matter – have been conducted.
Thus, our discussion of the potential impacts must of necessity be specula-
tive. Nevertheless, a number of possible effects can be identified. The
possibilities suggested below can be viewed indirectly as a set of research
questions that future empirical studies can/should be designed to answer. The
discussion below5 considers not only effects on passenger travel, but also
the effects on goods movement due to consumer decisions.
A total future shopping-related change in transportation will be the net
outcome of potentially four different fundamental causes. At least at the
conceptual level, it is useful to view these four causes hierarchically – arranged
in order of decreasing directness of the relationship – and treat them one at
a time:
• changes in shopping mode share (i.e. shifts in the proportion of shopping
activities conducted through store shopping, e-shopping and other modes),
keeping the volume of goods purchased and per capita consumption
spending constant;
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• changes in the volume of goods purchased, keeping per capita consump-

tion spending constant;
• changes in per capita consumption spending, independent of demographic
changes; and
• demographic changes.
It would be valuable to be able to decompose any net change in trans-
portation into these four separate sources, in order to properly understand
the nature and specific causes of the observed change. Actually doing so would
be difficult in practice. Nevertheless, it is useful to identify these separate
effects, to help ensure that they are not overlooked in research design and
analysis. For example, it would be easy to focus on the first and most direct
source of impact on transportation – a simple substitution of one shopping
mode for another – and conclude that e-shopping reduces travel, whereas the
deduction could be quite different if the other sources were also taken into
account. Below we discuss each category in turn.

4.1. Transportation impacts of changing shares of shopping “mode” given

fixed volume

For the potential effects mentioned in this subsection, the initial assumption
is that the total volume (loosely meant as number and kind) of goods purchased
remains constant, even if the specific goods purchased are redistributed in time
and/or space. It is precisely the transportation impacts of those redistribu-
tions that are of interest here. In succeeding subsections we relax the constant
volume assumption.
• To the extent that e-shopping replaces store shopping, travel by the consumer
will theoretically decrease. But first of all, in some cases the Internet simply
replaces the telephone instead of a trip to the store, as when one books travel
over the Internet instead of calling a travel agent, or places a clothing
order online rather than phoning it in after browsing through a physical
catalog. Even if a store trip does occur, the transportation impact of a shift
to e-shopping depends on the extent to which store shopping for the item(s)
now purchased electronically was chained to other activities (Handy &
Yantis 1997). In many cases the incremental distance added by the shopping
trip is negligible (the stop at the store is made on the way to another location,
or the electronic purchase replaces some but not all of the items purchased
in the store), in which case the Internet purchase will save virtually no
consumer travel (Williams & Tagami 2003). It should also be kept in mind
that when the shopping trip is made by walking, cycling, or public trans-
portation, eliminating the trip will not benefit congestion, energy
consumption, or air quality (Keskinen et al. 2001), and in fact will carry
the disbenefit of reduced physical exercise.
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• Replacing store shopping by e-shopping shifts the travel required to deliver

the purchased goods from the consumer to the provider, with an uncertain
net impact. Provider-side delivery trips may be more efficiently organized
than consumer-supplied deliveries – or they may not be, depending on
both the extent to which the consumer trip was chained to other activi-
ties, and the provider-side tradeoffs between efficiency and timeliness of
delivery. Some researchers (e.g. Niles 1994) suggest that consumer demand
for fast delivery, or for delivery within narrow windows (Lin & Mahmassani
2002; Siikavirta et al. 2003), makes it more difficult for the provider to
achieve economies in packing and routing trucks, and increases the demand
for the more energy-intensive airline delivery mode over truck or rail
(Matthews et al. 2001; Murtishaw & Schipper 2001). On the other hand,
ICT is also helping to increase the efficiency of goods movement through
information sharing and load consolidation across multiple shippers
(Greenleaf 2000; Marker & Goulias 2000; Rabah & Mahmassani 2001;
Lin et al. 2002).
• E-shopping may change the frequency of shopping. One possibility is that
the increased convenience of e-shopping will increase the frequency,
resulting in more (possibly smaller) individual deliveries. For example,
one weekly trip to a grocery store may be replaced by two or three smaller
deliveries during the week. On the other hand the opposite outcome was
found in at least one Finnish study (Kärnä 2001), but it was noted that
Finns have an unusually high baseline (without an e-shopping alternative)
frequency of 4–5 weekly trips to a grocery store. Currently high delivery
charges may discourage increases in frequency for many (Burke 1998),
but it is an important possibility to monitor. Even if the volume of goods
demanded by an individual remains constant (as we assume in this section),
when it is spread over more deliveries there is a penalty in terms of time,
energy consumption, and marginal added travel for each delivery, and hence
a greater requirement of resources.
• E-shopping may alter not only the frequency but also the “destination” of the
shopping trip (or, from the goods movement perspective, the “origin” of the
item being purchased). With the Internet offering global reach even to small
providers, manufacturing and delivery travel may increase as consumers and
businesses order products and services from more distant providers of whom
they would not otherwise have been aware, or to whom they would not have
traveled (Salon et al. 1999; Rabah & Mahmassani 2001).
• More widespread dissemination of information about physical stores using
ICT, e.g. through the Internet, sophisticated in-vehicle navigation devices,
or a mobile phone, may prompt trips to more distant stores, or new trips
to stores. This can increase transportation, even when the same volume of
goods is being purchased.
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• As mentioned in Section 3, many information-based goods may now be

delivered electronically. To maintain the assumption of fixed volume, here
we assume that those goods are all “reconstituted” or “rematerialized” by
the consumer converting them to physical platforms. In that case, the travel
associated with the manufacture and purchase/possession of the generic
display media (blank CDs, reams of printer paper) should also be accounted
for. Presumably the production and distribution of generic media should
be more efficient than that of specialized media, all else equal.
• It must not be overlooked that some of the goods purchased electronically
will be travel – as indicated earlier, perhaps as much as 29% of total
online retail sales. Under the assumption of fixed volume, some of those
purchases will represent cost savings (or even simply a more convenient
alternate means of booking) for a trip that would have been made anyway,
while others will in fact displace other trips (which, however, may well have
tended to be shorter, as when an intended domestic vacation is replaced
by an international one found at a similar price).

4.2. Transportation impacts of changing volumes given fixed per capita

spending

There are several ways in which the volume of physical goods purchased could
change while per capita consumer spending remains constant.
• As has already been mentioned, e-shopping can lead to cost savings, not
only due to the ability to comparison-shop, but also due to deeply discounted
last-minute sales of “perishable” items. The late sale of otherwise-unused
airplane seats is an example of a transaction that was not possible without
the Internet as a means for identifying and linking sellers and buyers. In
general, to the extent that e-tailers succeed in offering the same goods at
lower costs than before, consumers may purchase more goods for the same
amount of money (Cohen 2002). This would result in greater goods
movement for deliveries (and/or potentially increased passenger travel for
store shopping activities, assuming store retailers respond by cutting prices
as well). And to the extent that travel constitutes a particular product
enjoying cost savings, it is likely that purchases of travel will increase.
This is certainly the position of a recent European Commission (2001,
p. 23) report, which states categorically, “ICT will be a major factor behind
the growth of the travel sector, especially increasing demand in air
transport.”
In Section 4.1 we referred to the electronic delivery of digital goods, but
treated the constant volume case in which those goods were physically con-
stituted after delivery, through transference to a tangible platform for more
270

convenient display and use. Here, we observe that electronic delivery can
lead to changes in volume, in two ways.
• In the first case, the digital good remains virtual. Theoretically this may
reduce travel – both the passenger travel of the consumer to the store (to
the extent that the trip was not chained to other ones), and the goods
movement associated with manufacture and distribution of the physical item
(to the extent that the electronic version of the item would have been
replaced with a physical one if electronic delivery had not been avail-
able). In general, the increasing dematerialization of products (referring
not only to completely digital products, but to the reduced size and weight
of many physical goods as well6) may reduce the actual physical volume
of the same number (and type) of items purchased.
• On the other hand, if (1) a greater number of digital goods is demanded
due to cost reductions (whether through dematerialization as one impor-
tant mechanism (Bernardini & Galli 1993; Kärnä 2001), or through the other
factors identified above), and (2) those goods are generally rematerialized
by the end user, higher volumes would result. For example, prior to the
Internet, a physical report may have been mailed to a relatively small number
of people. Now, the same report may be e-mailed to, or accessed on the Web
by, a much larger number of people – only a fraction of whom will print
it off, but that fraction may be a greater number in absolute terms than
the number obtaining it previously. This effect would increase goods
movement in total – although, as mentioned earlier, there could be further
spatial and temporal redistributions resulting from the detachment of the
distribution format (now electronic) from the display/use format (still
physical).
• However, the Internet could not only support a shift to a higher volume
of cheaper goods. The personalization and other customer-service capa-
bilities of e-retailing could also lead to the production of higher-value/cost
goods, which are then purchased in lower volumes by the consumer with
a fixed budget. Both types of shifts are likely to occur, with an unknown
net impact.
• Finally, shifting the allocation of a fixed consumer budget between material
products and immaterial services could alter the total physical volume of
material products requiring delivery, and total personal transportation
required to receive or provide services, in either direction. A priori, it is
not clear that increased e-shopping favors a shift in either direction, but it
is a potential effect to be monitored.
 271

4.3. Will per capita spending remain fixed?

It is tempting to focus on substitutions of e-shopping for store shopping in

the context of a specific purchase or within a fixed budget. But if in fact
there is an increase in consumer spending overall, then substitutions at the
margin may be more than counteracted by expansions in the total. Eminent
scholars such as Peterson et al. (1997, p. 5 of the online version), endorsed
by Burke (1997), assume that “use of the Internet for marketing purposes
will not increase overall consumer spending . . . There is no intuitive reason
why the Internet, or any service based thereon, will in and of itself cause
consumers to spend more.” However, we have already seen a number of ways
in which the Internet can stimulate consumers to buy more of some things than
they would have otherwise:
• The ease of marketing to consumers (particularly targeted marketing) and
conducting transactions over the Internet (see, click, buy) may increase
the volume of impulsive or compulsive purchases (Eastin 2002).
• The convenience of e-shopping and the greater variety available may
stimulate purchases that are more deliberate than impulsive, but that simply
would not have taken place in stores otherwise. In some cases time and/or
mobility constraints may prohibit a counterpart in-store experience; in other
cases the Internet may draw a directed search for items not expected to
be available in local stores.
• As seen in Section 4.1, location-based marketing could increase travel
even if total spending remained constant. In some cases it could also increase
spending while leaving travel constant (by successfully marketing new
goods at locations that were going to be visited anyway). It is quite likely,
however, to do both – increase spending and increase travel.
• The appeal of increasingly personalized goods may release some latent
demand for products or services that otherwise would have gone unrealized.
For example, the ability to customize CDs may increase the music con-
sumption of people who would not purchase a mass-produced CD for the
sake of one or two favorite songs.
• As discussed in Section 3, the Internet offers another channel for stimu-
lating desire and for obtaining information about a desired good. The
Internet is not just one more channel among many, but has a number of
characteristics not shared by other advertising media: its (potential) ubiquity;
its capacity to store vast amounts of information; its temporal breadth and
depth (not only available 24/7 now, but also offering historical archives);
its searchability and linkability; and its multimedia capabilities. These traits
are likely to spread information about consumer goods in a way no other
medium has done. Again thinking particularly of travel as a consumer good,
272

the ease of obtaining information about people, activities, and destinations

through the Internet seems likely to increase the consumption of travel
(Couclelis 2000). But the same mechanism can be at work for other types
of goods as well.
The question is whether these mechanisms that increase spending are
compensated for by reducing purchases elsewhere in order to leave total per
capita spending constant. A common theme of these postulated mechanisms
is that, for the most part (with some exceptions), the Internet provides new
consumer options without foreclosing on old ones. Although consumers can
and will reduce their use of the old options in some cases, it seems likely
that e-shopping, to some extent, will augment rather than simply replace
consumer spending via store shopping or other modes. Thus, all things con-
sidered, I believe it is quite possible for there to be a net increase of consumer
spending attributable to ICT generally and the Internet specifically, but this
is pure speculation that should be subjected to scientific test when additional
data become available.
At least two empirical studies indirectly address the question of whether
Internet purchases generate a net increase in consumer spending, but do not
provide enough evidence for a firm determination, even one limited to their
specific contexts. One early study (Casas et al. 2001, using 1999 household
activity survey data from residents of Sacramento, California) found no
statistical differences in the shares of (store) shopping trips conducted by
Internet shoppers and non-Internet shoppers, suggesting that Internet purchases
were generally supplementing rather than replacing store trips. However, since
the focus of the study was on trips rather than spending, it is possible that
Internet shoppers could be purchasing less in stores while making the same
number of trips as before, leaving total spending constant.
Another study found that 6% of online purchases would not have occurred
otherwise (Jupiter Communications 1999, cited in Rabah & Mahmassani 2001).
But, first, the study apparently did not ask whether any store-based (or other)
purchases were foregone to compensate for the increased spending for online
goods. Since the information given addresses only one side of the question,
it is impossible to determine the net impact due to changes in both direc-
tions. Second, even if no other changes occurred so that the reported 6%
constituted entirely new purchases, the amount of money spent on them is
unknown.
If new spending comprised approximately 6% of online retail revenues, then
given the current share of total retail spending that is taking place online (at
least 1.3% in the US in 2002, as mentioned in the Introduction), any overall
increase in consumer spending due to the Internet would be too small to
detect at this early stage. However, with the accumulation of a few more
 273

years of aggregate data, it would be of interest to analyze whether incre-

mental changes in per capita consumer spending could in fact be attributed
to Internet shopping as well as m-commerce, after more traditional influ-
ences are accounted for. At the disaggregate level, it would be of interest to
survey consumers about the extent to which they have altered their spending
patterns, both in share and in absolute terms, as a consequence of ICT.
Respondents’ direct self-assessments of those shifts, however, would be subject
to considerable recall error. Reporting on the hypothetical “what would you
have done with respect to this particular purchase if you had not made it
over the Internet” is difficult enough, but it seems far more difficult to identify
and report money not spent in other ways due to spending it on new Internet
purchases. A more reliable approach would be to simply measure the spending
of a panel of consumers longitudinally, and track how total amount and
distribution among shopping modes changes over time. Ideally, the two dis-
aggregate approaches would be combined in a single study, providing the
strengths of both: objective measurement of all spending in the one case,
and useful insight into the perceived availability and utility of alternative
shopping modes in the other case.
Conceptually then, the transportation impacts of an increase in per capita
consumer spending could take three forms. The more tangible goods that are
purchased online, the more freight travel – for the manufacture and delivery
of the goods not otherwise demanded – will increase. (Even intangible items
are likely to involve some transportation in their production.) The more goods
that are purchased through location-based marketing, the more personal travel
to stores is likely to increase. And obviously, the more money that is spent
on travel as a good in itself, the more travel there will be.

4.4. Transportation impacts of demographic changes

Separately from any of the other effects discussed so far, changes in the
population size, average household size, employment rate, and other such
demographic indicators over time will affect consumer spending in the aggre-
gate. For example, all else equal, the more households there are, the greater
the demand for furniture, housewares, automobiles, and so on. Thus, both
increases in population and decreases in average household size suggest
continued increases in consumer spending overall. 7 While these demographic
changes are not due to the Internet, they do have direct implications for fore-
casting the magnitude of the market for shopping in general, e-shopping in
particular, and the transportation impacts of the resulting mix.
274

4.5. The net effect

Obviously, the potential effects described above do not all operate in the
same direction: some will decrease travel but others will increase it. These
counteracting effects clearly illustrate the complex nature of the impacts of
e-shopping on travel. While the magnitude of the net impact is uncertain, in
this author’s opinion the direction of the impact is almost certainly going to
be toward increasing travel. The systemwide effects of such an increase will
probably be small in view of the proportion of total passenger travel that is
devoted to shopping (perhaps at most8 14% of local person-distance traveled
in the 1995 Nationwide (US) Personal Transportation Survey; Hu and Young
(1999). The share of road distance traveled that is devoted to shopping for
“daily goods” in Finland is estimated at 12%; Siikavirta et al. 2003). Those
effects are nevertheless worth monitoring and understanding precisely because
they are uncertain. The effects may well not be small in some localized areas
(the impacts of increased delivery traffic on the character of residential
neighborhoods, for example). Further, it is important to understand the dis-
tribution of various effects across time, mode, and demographic segment as
well as space. For example, an outcome of decreases in local auto travel that
are counteracted by increases in air travel would be quite different from an
outcome of net increases in auto travel.

5. Empirical research issues

The preceding discussion has highlighted some of the complexities of the

relationships between e-shopping and transportation. As mentioned, to date
there is little empirical evidence with which to calibrate these relationships
– not only because the e-shopping phenomenon is so new and still so volatile,
but also precisely because the relationships are so complex, and measure-
ment is such a challenge. An exhaustive discussion of these challenges is
beyond the scope of this paper, but it is of value to consider at least some major
issues with respect to empirical analysis. Following the observation in Section
2, we divide the discussion into two parts: aspects related to modeling the
adoption of e-shopping, and aspects related to understanding its transporta-
tion impacts.
At least one issue is common to both parts, however: the need to segment
the market. Consumer goods (not to mention services) are too varied for one
approach to be uniformly appropriate. Logical bases for segmentation include
purchase frequency/price of the item, and (usually roughly corresponding)
the size of the area over which a search for the item is normally conducted.
For example, we can distinguish goods based on whether the search area is
 275

generally regional (e.g., cars), citywide (e.g., electronics and major appliances),
or local (groceries, books, CDs). It can be expected that the “typical” shopping
process – how the elements described in Section 3 are combined – will vary
by category.9 For example, cycling through information gathering and trial
sequences more than once is more likely to characterize higher-value purchases
(although successive instances of repetitive shopping can also be viewed as
sequential information-gathering and trial episodes).

5.1. Modeling the adoption of e-shopping

As mentioned earlier, a number of study approaches are interesting and useful,

including aggregate studies of changes in consumer expenditures over time.
Here, we take the perspective of trying to understand the adoption of
e-shopping at the disaggregate level. That is, how do characteristics of the
individual, the choice context, and the shopping alternatives influence the
choice to e-shop or not? Obtaining data on these variables can generally not
be done through external observation alone, but almost inevitably involves
self-reporting of attitudes, behavior, and other characteristics of the shopper,
typically on a questionnaire or in an interview.
Obtaining appropriate data for modeling the adoption of e-shopping requires
careful specification of the dependent variable and the explanatory variables.
With respect to the dependent variable, the following questions present
themselves:
• What is the definition of alternatives? Whether or not the Internet is used
at all in a shopping activity (a binary variable)? The “primary” shopping
mode for a given activity (potentially a multinomial variable, with outcomes
such as store, Internet, catalog)? Bundles of mode sequences (e.g. Internet
for information-gathering, store for trial/evaluation, Internet for transaction,
store for return; or Couclelis’ 8-bundle typology described in Section 3)?
The answer to that question will partly depend on:
• What is the time frame of interest? That is, are the alternatives defined
with respect to a given single purchase (e.g. the most recent purchase) in
the study category? With respect to any purchase made within a certain time
period? With respect to a “typical” purchase for frequently-purchased goods
such as groceries or pharmaceuticals?
The researcher must further decide:
• What is the type of construct being studied? Actual choice? Stated (hypo-
thetical) choice? Preference (which may differ from choice)?
With respect to the explanatory variables, the following seem important
276

to consider, in view of the discussion throughout this paper (also see Salomon
& Koppelman 1988; and Koppelman et al. 1991):
• mode-specific shopping frequency with respect to the kind of good in
question;
• what shopping mode alternatives are perceived to be available for the kind
of good in question;
• how each alternative is perceived on a number of dimensions (including,
potentially among others, the various pros and cons presented in Section
2) with respect to the kind of good in question;
• distance to store alternatives for the kind of good in question;
• whether trips for such purposes are generally chained to other trips (relevant
not only to ascertaining the transportation impacts of various shopping
modes, but since it helps determine the travel time and cost of the store
alternative, it is relevant to adoption as well);
• general attitudes toward technology; the various shopping modes; time (sen-
sitive to saving it?); prices (bargain-hunter?); and travel (find it desirable
under some circumstances?);
• adoption and usage of various ICTs;
• socio-demographic characteristics: employment, education, income, gender,
household size/presence of children, auto ownership, and so on.
Depending on how heterogeneous the study category is, it may also be
important to ask about:
• relevant attributes of the specific product(s) in question (e.g. the most recent
purchase): how heavy, bulky, perishable, and so on.

5.2. Estimating the transportation impacts of e-shopping

To discuss research issues with respect to evaluating the transportation impacts

of e-shopping, we take the context of a hypothetical study in which it is desired
to measure empirically:
• the total (passenger and freight) travel impact of shopping (both store and
electronic), compared to some prior (or contemporaneous control) non-
electronic state (e.g., vehicle-kilometers traveled, or VKT, “after” compared
to “before”, or VKT “with e-shopping” compared to VKT “without”); and
• the short-term spatial and temporal redistribution of travel (segmented by
passenger and freight).
Again, there are certainly other interesting and important questions to
explore related to the transportation impacts of e-shopping (see, e.g., Nagurney
et al. 2002 for a network optimization approach to modeling adoption and
 277

transportation impacts simultaneously). However, simply understanding the net

impacts on travel, and their spatial and temporal distribution, is important to
public policymakers and planners, especially if their initial expectation is
that e-shopping can be promoted as a strategy for reducing travel.
In exploring this issue, it is critical to consider both categories of travel
as well as both types of shopping, because of the interactions between cate-
gories. For example, passenger shopping travel may decrease, but we must
determine whether that is counteracted by increases in goods movement.
E-shopping will almost certainly increase, but store shopping may not decline
by a corresponding amount, for the reasons described in Section 4. Thus, we
envision the need for a type of comprehensive “Life Cycle Analysis” (LCA)
of the transportation impacts of e-shopping (see, e.g., Fiksel 1996; Kitou et
al. 2001; and Gard & Keoleian 2003).
With respect to this type of study, there are a number of important chal-
lenges relating to data collection. On the consumer side, it is necessary to
collect data both on trips and on shopping-related Internet activity. Travel diary
data collection techniques are well-known (see, e.g., Axhausen 1995, 1996),
with burdensome traditional paper-based methods currently giving way to more
automated processes involving global positioning system (GPS) and hand-held
computer technologies (e.g., Doherty et al. 1999; Draijer et al. 2000). Most
travel diaries focus on local travel; ascertaining the effect of the Internet on
air travel, as discussed in Section 4, would necessitate broadening that scope.
Yet it is important to do so, to fully account for all transportation effects.
Internet data collection techniques are less familiar to transportation
researchers, and even market researchers are not always sure how to mine
the vast databases representing paths through cyberspace, dwell times at various
nodes, and so on made by millions of users. In the current context, simply
unobtrusively collecting and studying “clicks” does not seem adequate: it is
important to query the individual to put otherwise disembodied Internet activity
in the proper context. The kinds of questions that seem important to ask
include: the sequence of shopping activities around a particular category of
goods, how each element of the sequence was conducted (electronically or
physically), the availability and utility of alternate shopping modes for con-
ducting each element, and the transportation implications of each activity in
the sequence, including what would have taken place if the chosen mode had
not been available. Such a questionnaire may well need to be computerized
rather than paper-based, to take advantage of the ability to transparently cus-
tomize the survey to fit each consumer’s sequence of activities.
In any case, it ultimately becomes necessary to combine data collected on
trips with the data collected on “clicks”, in such a way that the net trans-
portation impacts for the consumer can be determined – a challenge in and
of itself.
278

On the retailer side, we need to measure the impacts on goods movement.

One approach would be to track changes over time in distance traveled, number
of deliveries, volume of deliveries per unit time; distribution of delivery
priorities; and so on. Thus, a cooperative retailer/delivery agent is essential.
One may ask, “how far back up the supply chain must the analysis go?” If
e-shopping results in deliveries to the consumer from newly-located ware-
houses, we should account not only for the change in travel from the warehouse
to the consumer (compared to different warehouse to store to consumer), but
also for the change in travel from the manufacturer to the new warehouse.
Thus, the answer to the question theoretically is, “until the point at which there
is no difference between store and e-shopping”. In practice, of course, this will
be quite difficult. Finally, synthesizing the consumer and retailer sides (e.g.,
assigning the proper incremental increase in delivery travel to balance against
a measured decrease in shopper travel) would be non-trivial, requiring data
on the same purchases from both sides.
There are some challenges with respect to analysis methodologies as well.
One difficulty is to properly assess causality. As has been noted here and
elsewhere (e.g., Mokhtarian 2003), ICTs have the potential to increase travel
as well as replace it. Thus, when a study (Casas et al. 2000) finds (even after
controlling for income, age, and gender) that Internet shoppers make signifi-
cantly more daily trips (4.5) than non-Internet shoppers (3.7), is greater travel
the cause or the effect of ICT usage? In the short run, the most plausible
explanation may be that early adopters of e-shopping include busy people
who tend to make more trips even with e-shopping – meaning that their greater
travel is one cause of their choice to e-shop. Taking the longer view, however,
there is ample evidence to suggest that more travel will be an effect of ICT
as well. Calibrating these bi-directional relationships correctly may require
tracking the same people across time, and collecting as complete informa-
tion as possible on all their travel and communication activities – a formidable
challenge (Mokhtarian & Meenakshisundaram 1999).
No single study will be able to provide definitive answers with respect to
even the short-term impacts of e-shopping on transportation – even for a single
segment of the market, let alone across the board. Rather, as with the study
of most complex phenomena, we can expect answers to come through the slow
accumulation of findings of multiple studies of partial aspects of the
phenomenon, in different contexts – findings that will differ across market
segments, and sometimes conflict even within the same segment.
 279

6. Conclusions

This paper has discussed, at a conceptual level, a number of issues related

to the adoption of e-shopping, and to the evaluation of its transportation and
spatial impacts. We have reviewed the comparative advantages of store
shopping and e-shopping, and concluded that neither type uniformly dominates
the other. We have identified the building blocks of the shopping process,
and noted that ICT is making possible the spatial and temporal fragmenta-
tion and recombination of those elements. We have examined some potential
transportation impacts of e-shopping, and noted that some factors result in
reduced travel while others lead to increased travel. The combined outcome
of all factors does not appear to support any hope that e-shopping will reduce
travel on net; to the contrary there may be negative impacts due to increased
travel, even if those impacts are likely to be localized and/or small in mag-
nitude for the most part.
With respect to adoption, on the whole, e-shopping seems to have some
properties shared by many other technological advances. Specifically, rather
than an “either – or” choice between store shopping and e-shopping, we are
likely (with some exceptions) to see continued adoption of both forms, “as
parallel, coexisting systems that are both complementary and competing”
(Peterson et al. 1997, p. 13 of online version). Consumers will blend both forms
as they conduct a sequence of shopping activities, and retailers will blend
both in marketing to and serving customers. E-shopping will substitute for store
shopping at the margin, but both forms of shopping will probably continue
to expand and co-exist. Thus, the dominant relationships between e-shopping
and store shopping will not be replacement of the latter by the former, but
interactive augmentation and modification of both.
With respect to the transportation impacts of e-shopping, assessing them
– even in the short term, let alone the long term – presents some formidable
measurement challenges. Nevertheless, those challenges are worthy of our most
creative efforts at solution – first for the rewards of discovery and an increased
understanding of complex human behavior systems, but also to assist urban
planners and decision makers in monitoring this important shift in travel
patterns, with an eye to ameliorating deleterious effects to the extent possible.

Acknowledgements

The comments of two anonymous referees have improved this paper.

280

Notes

1. For 2001, The Forrester Group (www.forrester.com) indicates that about 29% (or $14 billion)
of its estimate of $48 billion in online sales was for airline tickets, car rentals, and hotels.
Thus, accounting for differences in what each series includes, their numbers seem relatively
consistent with those of the Department of Commerce.
2. Interestingly, however, it seems to be the norm for online grocery services to stock fewer
items than their store counterparts (Cairns 1996; Tanaka et al. 1998).
3. On the other hand, some authors (Burke 1997) note that the plentiful information available
over the Web nevertheless generally lacks a human interface with whom customers can interact
in real time to obtain answers to questions, and others (Manski & Salomon 1987) suggest
that information overload may be an issue.
4. Peterson et al. (1997), however, point out that although the Internet is inferior to store shopping
on this dimension, it is superior to catalog shopping in the quantity and quality of the
“perceptual experience” it can provide.
5. This section is much more fully developed from skeletal and less complete lists of impacts
appearing in Mokhtarian and Salomon (2002) and Mokhtarian (2000). Also see Siikavirta
et al. (2003) for a list of potential environmental impacts of e-commerce that places more
emphasis on the seller and less on the buyer than I do here.
6. Technically, of course, the latter types of dematerialization generally cannot be considered
Internet-based. But it is convenient to raise the general issue of the transportation impacts
of dematerialization in this context. And Kärnä (2001) identifies several ways in which
electronic grocery shopping in particular might facilitate dematerialization for physical
goods (such as the ability to reduce packaging that is designed to capture the store shopper’s
eye, and the ability to better manage inventory and hence reduce waste).
7. Not to mention rising per capita incomes, which will almost inevitably lead to increased
per capita spending, but independently of the ICT-based stimuli mentioned in the preceding
subsection.
8. This is likely an upper bound, due to trip chaining. If an individual stops at a store on the
way home from work, the distance from work to store will presumably be allocated to the
“shopping” purpose, even if the store is precisely on the way home from work and the same
distance would have been traversed without the shopping stop.
9. Peterson et al. (1997) suggest classifying products and services as being either search goods
(the features of which “can be evaluated from externally provided information”) or experi-
ence goods (needing “to be personally inspected or tried”). Alternatively, they present three
dimensions along which products and services can be classified: cost/frequency of purchase,
tangibility/intangibility, and differentiability. Either of these categorization systems can also
be a useful basis for market segmentation.

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About the author

Patricia L. Mokhtarian is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chair

of the interdisciplinary graduate program in Transportation Technology and Policy, and
Associate Director for Education of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the
University of California, Davis. She specializes in the study of travel behavior,
particularly the impacts of telecommunications technology on travel.