Online grocery shopping: a boom, hype, or black ice?

Abstract

Buying groceries online is no longer a novel phenomenon: recent studies (2016) show that in Germany, approximately 30 percent of potential buyers have already purchased groceries online. Together with the latest grocery shopping services from the online giant Amazon (e.g. Amazon Fresh and Amazon go), this growing sector of online food and drink retail comprises an attractive field for economic research. General research objectives in this field investigate sustainable business models, planning of logistics structures, and changes in buyer behaviour. The purpose of this present study was to analyze buyer behavior in the field of online food retail based on a process design derived from principles of Quality Management. A convenience sample of 822 valid data records was collected from November– December 2016 using a sophisticated online survey tool. The data set contains responses from 256 individuals who had already bought groceries online, while the rest of the respondents had not previously purchased groceries online. The study strongly underscores the great potential of online retail grocery industry, while also detailing the potential risks associated with this business model, such as low profit margins and packaging issues.