How US Mobility has Eroded and Accelerated Retail Sales from 2020-22

The Apple Mobility index, published from January 13, 2020 to April 13, 2022, tracked the relative volume of map direction requests for various cities, regions and countries as people were driving, walking or taking public transportation to places.

As the US went into a lockdown in early 2020, key retail segments suffered tremendously, but with many recovering and accelerating their performance thanks to stimulus checks and the pent-up need for consumers to be out & about again.

We created the below Tableau Public dashboard to quickly illustrate the relationship between our mobility trends over the last couple of years and monthly sales for key Retail segments. Unsurprisingly, the Grocery industry was largely unaffected, followed by Beer & Liquor stores. However, segments like Auto Parts and Tire Retailers recovered in a very positive way starting the 2nd half of 2020, thanks to increased driving and government stimulus checks.

While Apple discontinued publishing this mobility index dataset last month, I highly encourage you to take advantage of similar public data sources to augment your own Demand Forecasting algorithms, Revenue Projections and Planning processes.

Enjoy playing with this and reach out with any questions or comments!

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