Research suggests a typical physical store shopping trip takes about an hour.

True: there is research (a survey or study available before April 2021) estimating that a typical in-person shopping trip, including travel, parking and checkout, takes about an hour (roughly 45–75 minutes). Mostly true: research gives a figure somewhat outside that band, about 40 or 80 minutes, or covers a related scope such as grocery trips only. Mixed: research is split, with some estimates near an hour and others well below or above it. Mostly false: no research supports the figure, or it applies only to a narrow kind of trip and is stated as typical. False: research consistently shows typical trips are far from an hour, for example under 30 minutes.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Where do you hate to wait? Deseret News (AP-Ipsos poll story) · 29 May 2006

   “The typical supercenter shopper spends 25 to 30 minutes in the store, but many think they've been there an hour, Underhill says.”

2. E2 [PDF] Commerce Save Consumers Time and Money, and Reduce Emissions CCIA (paper by Trevor Wagener) · February 2025

   “Urban consumers, with access to a higher density of retail stores, spend approximately 20 minutes traveling to and from nearby stores and an additional 15 minutes in-store, for a total of 35 minutes per trip.”

3. E3 [PDF] Commerce Save Consumers Time and Money, and Reduce Emissions CCIA (paper by Trevor Wagener) · February 2025

   “Low-income rural shoppers spend an average of 45 minutes traveling and 20 minutes in-store, totaling 65 minutes, while high-income rural shoppers average slightly less time—about 60 minutes—due to better transportation options”

4. E4 Extrapolations: mall habits kk.org (Kevin Kelly blog) · 4 June 2014

   “On average, shoppers visit 3.4 times per month and stay 1 hour and 24 minutes.”

5. E5 Consumption Inequality and the Frequency of Purchases Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Dmitri Koustas (CE Microdata Users' Workshop slides, hosted by BLS) · 20 July 2017

   “Shopping time includes travel time, comparison time, etc.).”

The criteria require research from before April 2021 that estimates how long a typical in-person shopping trip takes, including travel. The pre-2021 evidence gives only partial measures. E1 reports 25–30 minutes spent inside a supercenter, and E4 reports a mall visit of 1 hour 24 minutes; both exclude travel and cover narrow store types. E5 gives no figure for a single trip, and E2/E3, which give full-trip totals of 35–65 minutes, were published in 2025, after the cutoff. The evidence therefore does not settle whether pre-2021 research put a typical trip at about an hour.