Foot Traffic and Dwell Time Trends at Office Supply Stores (Early 2020)

This repository contains the final deliverables for a group analytics project that studied how the early-2020 remote work shift impacted office supply store visits and dwell time patterns.

Project focus

• Industry: Office Supply Stores (NAICS 453210) using SafeGraph mobility data
• Geography: United States, with county-level deep dive in California using Urban, Suburban, and Rural classification
• External data: 2020 RUCA (Rural-Urban Commuting Area) codes for urbanization classification

Research questions

1. How did visits and dwell times evolve week by week during Jan to Apr 2020, and how do demographics (K-12 population, working-age population, education) relate to engagement patterns?
2. Did suburban counties show a stronger rise in visits than urban centers during the first wave of remote work?
3. Which brands stabilized faster in visits and dwell times, and what does that suggest about brand loyalty and essential purchasing behavior?

Key highlights (from the deliverables)

• Visits peaked in January and February 2020, then dropped sharply starting around mid-March as lockdowns began.
• Staples and Office Depot dominated traffic, while smaller specialty brands showed longer dwell times.
• Suburban areas drove the strongest visit volumes, and Los Angeles County stood out as a major hotspot in California.

Contents

• deliverables/Final_Report.pdf: final report
• deliverables/Final_Deck.pdf: presentation deck
• deliverables/Status_Report.pdf: status report and early query log
• sql/query_log.sql: extracted query log (review and reformat as needed)
• docs/Project_Overview_and_Deliverables.docx: project overview and deliverables rubric

Reproducibility notes

• The raw SafeGraph data is not included in this repository.
• SQL was written for Google BigQuery. See sql/query_log.sql for the query structure.

Acknowledgements

• Data source: SafeGraph (mobility patterns)
• External classification: RUCA codes (urbanization)