Quick look
More than a decade of shopping data reveals a clear split in how America gets its stuff. Big‑city shoppers have made home delivery a way of life, while rural households still prefer the trip into town. That divide is now steering everything from shipping speeds to where stores stay open, an Iowa State researcher and co-authors report in a new study examining how demand for last-mile fulfillment services in the U.S. has evolved over time.
AMES, Iowa - New research shows that Americans' use of home delivery continues to be split sharply along geographic lines, with shoppers in urban areas remaining more reliant on home delivery than rural households.
In a new study published in the International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Iowa State University researcher Micah Marzolf and co-authors analyzed more than a decade of shopping data to better understand how demand for last‑mile fulfillment services in the U.S. has evolved over time.
"The data revealed that long-standing differences between urban and rural consumers have persisted over time," said Marzolf, an assistant professor of supply chain management at Iowa State. "This includes before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, when we saw demand for delivery rise with the pandemic but then remain elevated after the pandemic's decline."
What exactly are last-mile fulfillment services? Simply put, last-mile fulfillment services carry out the final step in getting a product to a customer's home, a process also called "last-mile delivery."
In this stage of delivery, items are moved from a warehouse or fulfillment center directly to a customer's doorstep, Marzolf said, with a focus on doing so as quickly and smoothly as possible.
"Last-mile delivery is a moment of truth," Marzolf said. "It's a major driver of satisfaction, loyalty and brand perception for consumers, and it also accounts for the largest portion of total shipping costs because drivers are making many small and scattered stops at individual homes."
Geography still matters
In the study, Marzolf and her co-authors - Jason Miller, professor of supply chain management, and Simone Peinkofer, associate professor of supply chain management, both at Michigan State University - analyzed millions of U.S. shopping trips from 2010 to 2023 by reviewing transaction data from NielsenIQ covering roughly 60,000 households nationwide and identifying whether each purchase was made online or in person.
"Long before the pandemic reshaped consumer life, Americans - especially those living in large metropolitan areas - were already turning to last-mile delivery fulfillment services," Marzolf said.
While demand for last-mile fulfillment services rose nationwide between 2010 and 2019, Marzolf said the study's findings showed that in the most urban areas, demand grew substantially faster than in the most rural areas.
"By the end of the 2010s, the data clearly showed that city residents were more likely to rely on home delivery than people in rural areas," Marzolf said.
Daily realities, Marzolf and her fellow researchers wrote, play a significant role in this difference.
"In dense urban areas, traffic congestion and limited parking can make errands time‑consuming and turn delivery into a convenient alternative," said Marzolf, who also noted that higher order volumes in cities also make it possible for retailers to offer faster, lower‑cost delivery.
Rural shoppers, by contrast, often face longer wait times.
"For many rural consumers, making one trip to town to pick up groceries, prescriptions and other essentials likely still feels more practical than waiting for multiple packages to arrive," Marzolf said.
A permanent shift
When COVID-19 swept the country in 2020, Americans stayed home, stores closed and cardboard delivery boxes became a shared national symbol of adaptation, from apartment stoops in New York City to rural porches on Midwestern farms.
Online shopping surged across the nation - but the rise was still strongest in cities, Marzolf said, where the increase in the likelihood of shopping online was twice that of rural areas.
"Urban regions entered the pandemic ahead and emerged with an even bigger lead," Marzolf said.
One of the study's most impactful findings, however, is what happened - or rather, what didn't happen - next.
As lockdowns eased and stores reopened, demand for delivery didn't go back to pre-pandemic levels. Instead, it remained elevated through 2023, especially in urban areas.
"Many consumers who tried delivery out of necessity kept using it," Marzolf said. "What started as a temporary solution became a lasting preference for some."
It's a shift with practical implications for retailers and logistics firms moving forward.
"Urban areas continue to drive demand for last‑mile delivery, which strengthens the case for investments in city‑based fulfillment centers, micro‑warehouses and alternatives such as parcel lockers and store‑based fulfillment," Marzolf said.
At the same time, the study's findings suggest there are limits to how much delivery demand can grow in rural areas through infrastructure alone.
"Even when accounting for the presence of Amazon fulfillment centers, which we use as a representation of the last-mile infrastructure in the area, rural consumers were slower to adopt online shopping and continued to rely more heavily on physical stores than urban consumers," Marzolf said.
Those differences, Marzolf added, will continue to impact where companies build warehouses, which markets receive premium delivery options and where traditional retail stores remain central to local economies.
Lessons from a real-world stress test
Marzolf said the pandemic functioned as a real‑world stress test for modern supply chains, revealing both how quickly Americans can change their habits under pressure and how deeply those changes are shaped by where people live.
Across the country, consumers adapted rapidly when familiar shopping options disappeared during the pandemic. Many tried online ordering and home delivery for the first time, Marzolf said, while also learning new technologies and adjusting their expectations almost overnight.
However, these adaptations were far from uniform, the research shows, and existing differences between urban and rural areas - such as delivery speed, cost, infrastructure and daily travel patterns - continued to influence how consumers responded and which new habits lasted.
"Disruption can move everyone forward," Marzolf said, "but it doesn't move everyone to the same place."
