The Pump Penalty: Do Spiking Gas Prices Actually Drive Consumers to E-Commerce?

Conventional wisdom says high gas prices push shoppers online. Purchase data and consumer surveys tell a more complicated story.

American consumers are feeling the pain when they fill up their cars. But it’s worth asking whether that economic anguish is having an impact on other shopping activities.

Gas prices are running at their highest level for this time of year since 2022, having risen to roughly $4.30 nationally according to the AAA automobile club — a 40% jump from October 2025. 

The instinctive conclusion reached by most marketers and retail analysts is that painful prices at the pump will accelerate the shift to e-commerce. It seems reasonable to conclude that shoppers wishing to avoid the drive will opt instead to buy from their couches. 

Purchase data from Attain’s opt-in consumer panel, however, reveals a more nuanced picture.

Among households whose fuel spending grew from roughly 8% to 24% of their total wallet over the past year, the first casualties were not store visits — they were leisure and discretionary categories. Gambling took the steepest hit among this cohort, with ride-hailing, online shopping, travel, and electronics close behind. 

Grocery budgets held, but shoppers traded down, shifting toward cheaper options while fast food, discount stores, and coffee picked up share. The categories that suffered most were the ones people can postpone: trips, rental cars, flights, gyms, and electronics. 

Day-to-day essentials stayed largely in place. For these households, total spending barely moved even as fuel’s share jumped roughly 15 percentage points — the budget simply got pulled out of travel, leisure, and discretionary shopping to cover the pump.

Notably, online shopping itself appeared among the categories that declined for fuel-squeezed households. The assumption that e-commerce benefits when driving becomes expensive is not borne out in the purchase behavior Attain observed.

A survey of 1,098 U.S. consumers conducted by market research firm Ideally arrives at a consistent finding through a different lens. While 54% of survey respondents said they made fewer trips to physical stores during the most recent rise in gas prices, e-commerce did not absorb the difference. 

Only 15% said they made more online purchases during the same period, while 31% made even fewer. The survey findings suggest that higher gas prices are producing a pullback across both physical retail and digital channels rather than redirecting wallet share from one to the other.

“What stands out is how quickly higher gas prices change the way people plan their spending,” according to a representative for Ideally. “Consumers are making fewer trips, combining errands, delaying bigger purchases and paying closer attention to value.”

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The Trip That Disappears First

Allen Adamson, co-founder of brand consultancy Metaforce, draws a distinction that the aggregate data tends to obscure. High gas prices don’t reduce all store visits equally, he says — they selectively eliminate the trips people never enjoyed making. “Nobody loves running to the drugstore for batteries,” Adamson says. “That’s the trip that disappears first.”

Destination trips with clear value propositions hold up. The Ideally survey supports that read: warehouse club visits rose 9.6% in late June even as gas station convenience store visits fell 4.1% during the same period. Shoppers will drive the extra miles if they save more inside than they spent getting there. Attain’s purchase data adds texture to that pattern — discount stores gained share among fuel-squeezed households while costlier retail categories lost it, suggesting shoppers are making deliberate choices about which trips justify the cost.

The Ideally survey’s trip consolidation findings are among its most telling. Fifty-seven percent of survey respondents said they combined shopping stops into fewer trips specifically to save on gas. Gabby Stoller, CRO of ad tech platform Big Happy, sees grocery as the category best positioned to capture that behavior. 

“When getting there costs more, shoppers want fewer, more productive trips,” Stoller says. “One stop that covers groceries, paper towels, a prescription and shampoo beats four separate drives every time.” Retailers that combine grocery, general merchandise, and consumables under one roof are structured to capture a larger share of every consolidated basket.

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What Consumers Say vs. What They Do

Adamson flags a persistent gap between stated and actual behavior that marketers should factor into their planning. “Ask about gas prices and everyone says it’s awful. Ask if they’re cutting back and the answer is always yes. Then the data shows them still in the car, still shopping.” Store visits rose year over year for seven straight months through April. Americans, he argues, have decades of car-dependent shopping behavior behind them, and $4.48 a gallon is painful but not yet habit-breaking. The 2022 spike to $5.01 a gallon offers the relevant precedent — uncomfortable, but not transformative for retail behavior.

The Ideally survey data shows where consumers say they are pulling back. Eating out, takeout, and fast food led discretionary cuts at 48% of respondents, followed by travel and vacations at 32% and clothing and footwear at 28%. Forty-six percent said they spent less overall during the period. The Attain purchase data points in the same direction — the categories that moved most among fuel-squeezed households were precisely the ones consumers say they cut first: travel, leisure, and postponable purchases.

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The Marketing Implication

For retailers, Stoller’s prescription centers on communicating efficiency. “Messaging should emphasize convenience, breadth of assortment, promotions across multiple categories, value, pickup and delivery options and the ability to accomplish more in one trip,” she says.

The shopper consolidating errands is looking for a reason to make the drive count — and the retailer that makes that case most clearly captures the basket.

There’s also a renewed opportunity in fuel rewards. “Gas rewards were a yawn at $3,” Adamson says. “At $4.50, they’re a headline.” The marketing opportunity, he argues, is less about discounting and more about giving consumers a concrete reason to choose a particular destination — then delivering enough value inside to justify the trip.

Taken together, Attain’s purchase panel data and the Ideally survey results cut against the e-commerce displacement narrative from two directions. Rising gas prices are not creating a new population of online shoppers. They are making consumers more deliberate, more consolidation-minded, and more focused on value — and the retailers positioned to meet that shopper are the ones offering the most productive trip, not the shortest one.