Spending More Money in Less Time: The Evolution of Online Shopping Time Efficiency

The rise in online shopping can be largely attributed to its unmatched convenience, offering consumers the flexibility to shop from any location, at any time. It is widely assumed that online shopping saves time by eliminating the need to physically search for products, queue at checkout counters, and deal with crowds in physical stores. However, the evolving time efficiency of online shopping compared to traditional in-store shopping has not yet been empirically analyzed, leaving a gap in understanding time efficiency and how it has changed. This study aims to bridge that gap by analyzing time spent shopping both in-store and online from 2003 to 2023, utilizing data from the American Time Use Survey. The findings reveal that, in 2003, consumers were able to complete the equivalent of 1 h of in-store shopping in just 35 min online, falling to 15 min in 2023. Over the past decade (2013–2023), the average American has saved a total of 25 h per year due to the time efficiency of online shopping. An experience curve model was applied to characterize past trends and project the future. The resulting learning rate is between 12% and 19%. Using this in a projection suggests that 9.2–11.2 min of online shopping will be needed to replace 1 h of in-store shopping in 2030. Changes in time and money spent online versus in-store have implications for consumer activity patterns, time allocation, purchases, and building use. Increasing efficiency reflects a growing orientation toward speed and immediacy, reshaping shopping as a more instrumental practice, distancing consumers from the social and leisure aspects of shopping, and contributing to ongoing processes of temporal acceleration in everyday life.