Since you want to pass params to the component of the respective route you route object’s path property should have a dynamic segment denoted by : followed by the name of the key in your params object
so your routes should be
routes: [
{path: '/newLocation/:foo', name: 'newLocation', component: newComponent}
]
Then for programmatically navigating to the component you should do:
this.$router.push({name: 'newLocation', params: { foo: "bar"}});
See that I am using name of the route instead of path as you are passing params by the property params.
if you want to use path then it should be:
this.$router.push({path: '/newLocation/bar'});
by the path approach the params will automatically map to corresponding fields on $route.params.
Now if you console.log(this.$route.params) in your new component you will get the object : {"foo": "bar"}