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The purpose of this paper is to understand the beliefs of local grocery retailers about online grocery retailing. Using the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the study explores the outcome, normative and control beliefs held by the local grocers about online grocery retailing which would eventually translate into behavior. Factors influencing local grocers intention to participate or refusing to participate in the online grocery retailing was investigated.

In total, 20 in-depth interviews with local grocery retailers were conducted ranging from small to large sized retail stores from a city in the western part of India. The sample included two groups of local grocers – first, grocers who partnered with online retailers as suppliers. This group included those retailers who had partnered but discontinued later and second, grocers who had not partnered with online retailers. In-depth interviews with the local grocery retailers were conducted using TPB as a basis to uncover local grocers’ beliefs toward online grocery retailing and predict their behavior.

The outcome beliefs were classified into five broad heads – business expansion; gaining visibility and reputation; customer expectations; inventory management; and margins, costs and technical issues. The normative belief was that the actions and response to online grocery retailing would be governed by their referent group – the consumers. The main control belief was that partnering with online grocery retailing would result in loss of control regarding their business operations.

The results indicated that in a country like India especially in small to medium size towns, online grocery retailers would have to think of creative ways to involve the local grocery retailers to grow their business. The local grocers due to their size were able to adapt to the requirements of their referent consumers without any additional cost. They were unlikely to give up control regarding how they run their business. The main limitation of this study was the exploratory nature of this study which makes it difficult to prioritize the importance given to each belief. The study sample was restricted to one city in India, and future studies could include other cities.

The findings have practical implications for online grocery retailers who wish to expand into emerging markets like India. It provides understanding about the local grocery retailers who were the major competitors of online grocery retailers. It provides direction to integrate and partner with the local grocers and utilize them for mutual benefits.

Given the absence of academic literature in the public domain, this study provides a platform for future studies in this area. This paper is a systematic attempt to uncover the underlying beliefs of local grocery retailers who were the key players in the grocery retailing business.

Population growth, urbanisation and the increased use of online shopping are some of the key challenges affecting the traditional logistics model. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the distribution of grocery products ordered online and the subsequent home delivery and click and collect services offered by online retailers to fulfil these orders. These services are unsustainable due to increased operational costs, carbon emissions, traffic and noise. The main objective of the research is to propose sustainable logistics models to reduce economic, environmental and social costs whilst maintaining service levels.

The authors have a mixed methodology based on simulation and mathematical modelling to evaluate the proposed shared logistics model using: primary data from a major UK retailer, secondary data from online retailers and primary data from a consumer survey on preferences for receiving groceries purchased online. Integration of these three data sets serves as input to vehicle routing models that reveal the benefits from collaboration by solving individual distribution problems of two retailers first, followed by the joint distribution problem under single decision maker assumption.

The benefits from collaboration could be more than 10 per cent in the distance travelled and 16 per cent in the time required to deliver the orders when two online grocery retailers collaborate in distribution activities.

The collaborative model developed for the online grocery market incentivises retailers to switch from current unsustainable logistics models to the proposed collaborative models.

Consumers worldwide are increasingly ordering groceries from grocery delivery platforms (GDPs). This study aimed to explore the role of brick-and-mortar (B&M) retailers and GDPs in online grocery shopping (OGS) experience, attitude and continuous purchase intention under the platform model of online grocery retailing.

This study used a mixed method approach. A qualitative analysis was conducted based on 30 in-depth interviews and relevant literature to identify key attributes of the OGS experience. Then, data from 352 online grocery shoppers was used to examine the associations between service attributes, attitude and continuous purchase intention using a structural equation model.

The authors identified six key attributes of the OGS experience related to B&M retailers and GDPs. The quantitative study results showed that customer service, price value and instant delivery significantly impact attitude towards GDPs, while product quality, product assortment, customer service, price value and attitude toward GDPs positively impact online attitude toward B&M retailers. Online attitude toward B&M retailers significantly influences continuous purchase intention.

B&M retailers and GDPs should strengthen cooperation and joint oversight.

This study identified key attributes of the OGS experience associated with B&M retailers and GDPs under the platform model, giving a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between the OGS experience and behavioural intention when B&M retailers collaborate with GDPs.

This study aims to examine theoretical insights from market orientation and resource-based view for enhancing grocery retailers ' distribution capabilities. The distribution capability of a firm can influence both effective and efficient handling of external stocks and internal distribution of products in response to changing market demands. Although firms rely on distribution capability to manage their supply chain to ensure the right products are in the right place at the right time, few studies examine the underlying factors that support distribution capabilities for a firm’s upstream and downstream supply chain activities especially in uncertain environments.

In the context of retail firms, a review of the literature shows that distribution capability can be conceptualized as an interfirm phenomenon based on theoretical insights from the resource-based view, market orientation and network structure.

Data from a sample of 247 small- and medium-sized grocery retailers operating in three major Chinese cities highlight a salient and positive relationship between a retailer’s distribution capabilities and its performance in uncertain environments.

However, a retailer’s strong interfirm relations in a distribution network are negatively associated with retailer performance. Similarly, the influence of interfirm market orientation on retailer performance cannot be established in the supply chain. The study suggests that SME grocery retailers would benefit from understanding their numerous supply chain relationships and managing them (rather than relying on centrally ingrained relationships), and developing behavioral norms of interfirm market orientation among different supply chain partners.

The purpose of this paper is to present a mobile application supported townshipand urban e-grocery distribution models that uses a software application (app) to bridge the infrastructural barriers, costs and complexities associated with e-grocery delivery operations in rural township areas.

Using a qualitative multi-case approach and semi-structured interviews, the study explored distribution practices of eight national emerging e-grocery retail businesses to demonstrate how mobile applications can facilitate South African urban and township e-grocery delivery models.

The study reveals how the need to scale the use of new mobile application innovations fuels value-added services that power new e-grocery distribution models. Of interest is how the application aggregates demand rapidly, respond to demand within a short lead time and how e-grocers use competitors’ stores as their fulfilment centres. The use of apps reveals a slow transformation of society towards an inclusive model that integrates different types of workers in an informal context.

The mobile application value-added service business model offers a new wave of scaling e-grocery retail to rural and township areas constrained by technological, economic and road infrastructure. The apps transcend e-grocery barriers and enables small businesses with limited resources to leverage e-grocery market opportunities that are unimaginable in townships and rural areas.

The innovative mobile platform-base model offers emerging contextual insight of a pull e-grocery distribution model that demonstrates the supply chain innovations for addressing under-resource and under-developed logistics infrastructure.

There is a paucity of literature considering horizontal collaboration among grocery retailers, suppliers, and third‐party logistics (3PL) providers. This paper seeks to investigate benefits of and barriers to the use of fourth‐party logistics (4PL) management as a catalyst for horizontal collaboration.

Three suppliers, three logistics service providers (LSPs), and one grocery retailer participated in semi‐structured interviews for this exploratory qualitative study.

Large LSPs can establish 4PL management but the significant investment required to do so is a deterrent. Interviewees believed 4PL would negatively influence the grocery retailer‐supplier dynamic but simultaneously would provide key potential benefits. Retaining supply chain control means more to grocery retailers than cost efficiencies realised through horizontal collaboration.

Fierce competition among major grocery chains means that most are unwilling to participate in studies of their systems, which restricts the research scope.

Some stakeholders want deeper integration into grocery supply networks, and the 4PL model could apply to diverse sectors and circumstances. This study shows that barriers to such integration are created by power plays among lead stakeholders in grocery retailing that inhibit horizontal collaboration regardless of cost or other benefits.

The study investigates an under‐researched aspect of horizontal supply chain collaboration in the highly relevant retail grocery sector: a high volume, mass market industry that requires an enormous logistics infrastructure and highly embedded networks of relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to study mobile services for supply chain management (SCM) in the electronic grocery (e-grocery) sector. The authors investigate their diffusion and formulate policies in order to stimulate the adoption.

A System Dynamics model is proposed for a short fresh food supply chain (SC). The model predicts how product traceability, mobile payment, and time-based delivery management functionalities contribute to the adoption of a SCM mobile application.

The three services drive the diffusion of the application. A high level of real time information brings decreased inventory levels and more frequent order placing, leading to an increased number of logistics transactions managed by the mobile application and growth in the associated revenue for the service provider company.

The proposed study fosters research on overcoming the barriers that prevent integration, collaboration, and better visibility in e-grocery SCs.

This work constitutes a roadmap to identify the key enabling factors of e-grocery expansion.

This is one of the few contributions focussing on increasing the efficiency of e-grocery SCs by applying management strategies supported by mobile devices.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how grocery retailers configure their online fulfilment centres (OFC) as they move towards an omni-channel structure and what contextual factors influence their decisions.

An exploratory case study with three grocery retailers in the Nordic countries was conducted. The study investigates the current OFC configurations and identifies nine important contextual factors.

This study shows the importance of understanding the changes that omni-channel retailing entails for an OFC configuration. Nine contextual factors were identified. Several of the factors are found in previous theory, but this paper extends the knowledge of how they affect the configuration of an OFC in grocery retail. The changes in, for example, order characteristics create different requirements for picking, packing, sorting and shipping when compared with traditional distribution centres (DC). Although representing a separate flow for online fulfilment, OFC configuration depends on how the other logistics flows from the DC to stores are designed.

To support further theory development, nine contextual factors and their relationship to OFC configurations are proposed.

This study provides managerial value in two ways. First, grocery retailers with one or more OFCs can benchmark existing solutions using the empirical case descriptions. Second, the findings provide grocery retailers with knowledge of how to configure an OFC.

The literature lacks a holistic approach towards how grocery retailers configure their OFCs and what factors affect these decisions. This study provides the first in-depth analysis of how the omni-channel context affects the configuration of all the aspects of an OFC.

Last mile distribution is a crucial element of any supply chain network, and its complexity has challenged established practices and frameworks in the management literature. This is particularly evident when demand surges, as with recent lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent demand for home delivery services. Given the importance of this critical component, this study recommends horizontal collaboration as a possible solution for retailers seeking to improve the quality of their services.

This study investigates whether horizontal collaboration should be considered as an option for faster and greener distribution of groceries ordered online. Using the United Kingdom and Greek grocery markets that differ in terms of online grocery penetration, distribution network structure and delivery times, the study discusses how the effectiveness of pooling resources can create positive spillover effects for consumers, businesses and society.

Despite their differences, both markets indicate the need for horizontal collaboration in the highly topical issue of last mile delivery.

Taking a theoretical and practical view in cases of disruption and constant pressure in last mile distribution, horizontal collaboration supports retailers to coordinate routes, increase fleet and vehicle utilisation, reduce traffic and carbon emissions while improving customer satisfaction.

On‐shelf availability (OSA) is a key challenge for all retailers. Items that are out‐of‐stock (OOS) result in customer dissatisfaction; thus OSA/OOS are important customer service issues. Customer reactions to OOS range from product substitution to seeking products elsewhere. There remains much to do to research factors and causes of OOS affecting OSA from a supply chain perspective in a non‐grocery retail context. This research note aims to report on an exploratory investigation of OSA/OOS of four non‐grocery, high street retailers.

This paper discusses the extant academic and practitioner OSA/OOS literature to develop research questions for the investigation, which was conducted through in‐depth, qualitative interviews. Although a large sample was solicited only four different retailers in the fast‐moving consumer good categories of general merchandise, electronics, books, and mobile phones agreed to participate.

Findings indicate that the four retailers are not as focused on OSA as grocery retailers and that there is lack of collaboration with suppliers. This may have a significant impact on revenues and profitability as extant studies show that 65 per cent of consumers will not purchase in a store if confronted with an OOS situation.

Because of the low response rate only general trends across and within these four categories are reported. Notwithstanding, several important issues emerged for future research in this area and the non‐grocery arena.

Earlier work has provided insight into how supply chain issues affects OSA and OOS in grocery retailing. This paper extends that work to a non‐grocery setting, albeit on a limited basis, but provides scope for future research.