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Grocery retailers are operating in a slow‐growth market. The pursuit of market share is one of the main concerns for retail managers. The retail structure is becoming increasingly standardized and homogenous because of concentration of the ownership of stores. Cultural differences remain, however, between different European countries. Cultural factors influence the success of a positioning strategy. This study examined how consumers perceive grocery retail formats and brands in Finland. Data from personal interviews were used in highlighting the consumer perspective. Consumers perceive meaningful differences in various store formats, meanwhile store brands are seen as quite similar. Consumers rely on functional attributes of stores when discussing grocery stores. However, it seems that consumers are unable to recognize the fabricated, often imaginary differences at the brand level. The informant’s own, creative symbolic work results in this case to interpreting all grocery retail brands as similar. Managerial implications of the study are presented.

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain how elements of the built environment may or may not influence the frequency of grocery shopping.

Using data from the 2009 Seattle Obesity Study, the research investigated the effect of the urban built environment on grocery shopping travel frequency in the Seattle-King County area. Binary and ordered logit models served to estimate the impact of individual characteristics and built environments on grocery shopping travel frequency.

The results showed that the respondents’ attitude towards food, travel mode, and the network distance between homes and stores exerted the strongest influence on the travel frequency while urban form variables only had a modest influence. The study showed that frequent shoppers were more likely to use alternative transportation modes and shopped closer to their homes and infrequent shoppers tended to drive longer distances to their stores and spent more time and money per visit.

This research has implications for urban planners and policy makers as well as grocery retailers, as the seemingly disparate groups both have an interest in food shopping frequency.

Few studies in the planning or retail literature investigate the influence of the urban built environment and the insights from the planning field. This study uses GIS and a planning framework to provide information that is relevant for grocery retailers and those invested in food distribution.

The advent of grocery sales through online channels necessitates that bricks-and-mortar retailers redefine their logistics networks if they want to compete online. Because the general understanding of such bricks-and-clicks logistics systems for grocery is still limited, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the internal logistics networks used to serve customers across channels by means of an exploratory study with retailers from different contexts.

A total of 12 case companies from six European countries participated in this exploratory study. Face-to-face interviews with managers were the primary source for data collection. The heterogeneity of the sample enabled the authors to build a typology of logistics networks in grocery retailing on multiple channels and to understand the advantages of different warehousing, picking, internal transportation and last-mile delivery systems.

Bricks-and-mortar grocery retailers are leveraging their existing logistics structures to fulfill online orders. Logistics networks are mostly determined by the question of where to split case packs into customer units. In non-food logistics, channel integration is mostly seen as beneficial, but in grocery retailing, this depends heavily on product, market and retailer specifics. The data from the heterogeneous sample reveal six distinct types for cross-channel order fulfillment.

The qualitative analysis of different design options can serve as a decision support for retailers developing logistics networks to serve customers across channels.

The paper shows the internal and external factors that drive the decision-making for omni-channel (OC) logistics networks for previously store-based grocery retailers. Thereby, it makes a step toward building a contingency and configuration theory of retail networks design. It discusses in particular the differences between grocery and non-food OC retailing, last-mile delivery systems and market characteristics in the decision-making of retail networks design.

The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast customer perceptions related to satisfaction with conventional grocery stores as compared to specialty grocery stores. The study examines store attributes of product assortment, price, quality, and service in order to determine which attributes have the greatest impact on store satisfaction for each store format.

A mail survey was sent to a sample of specialty and conventional grocery store customers. The ten state sample was drawn from US households located in postal (ZIP) codes in areas where national specialty stores (e.g. whole foods) were located.

Perception of satisfaction were higher among specialty grocery store customers compared to conventional grocery store customers. For both store formats, store price, product assortment, service and quality positively influenced satisfaction. Stepwise regression indicated that each store attribute contributed differently to store satisfaction for conventional and specialty store formats.

The results demonstrate that price, product assortment, quality, and employee service influence store satisfaction regardless of store type (conventional stores or specialty stores). However, the degree of influence of these attributes varied by store type. The results imply that while specialty store shopper satisfaction characteristics are clearly delineated, conventional store shopper characteristics are more difficult to pinpoint. Research limitations include a sample that is more highly educated and has higher incomes than the average American household.

Despite the growth of new product categories and new industry players, few studies have investigated customer satisfaction within the retail food industry. Comparisons of specialty and conventional food stores are equally scarce.

This article seeks to understand whether Indian consumers are likely to move from traditional kirana stores to large organized retailers while shopping for groceries.

Two hypotheses were proposed: H1: customer patronage differs for different grocery store attributes and H2: customer perceptions of grocery store attributes differ for kirana stores and organized retailers. The study was carried out across four Indian cities‐ two major and two smaller cities with around 100 respondents from each city. Stratified systematic sampling design with a sample size of 409 was used for the study. Multivariate statistical techniques were used to analyze the data collected with the help of a structured questionnaire.

Customer patronage to grocery stores was found to be positively related to location, helpful, trustworthy salespeople, home shopping, cleanliness, offers, quality and negatively related to travel convenience. Kiranas do well on location but poorly on cleanliness, offers, quality, and helpful trustworthy salespeople. The converse is true for organized retailers.

Kiranas have major disadvantages on all customer perception scores except location. These scores being less important determinants of patronage compared with location, in the short run kiranas may not be ousted out of customers’ favour. However, in the long run if they do not work on these other factors, they would face oblivion.

Kiranas need to upgrade their facilities to be able to compete with the organized retailers, who are expected to improve their location scores rapidly in the near future.

The paper predicts whether the foray of large organized grocery retailing would close down millions of kirana shops and result in loss of livelihood, suggesting measures to counter the onslaught.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive set of grocery store attributes that can be standardized and used in empirical research aiming at increasing retailers’ understanding of determinants of grocery store choice, and assessing how the relative importance of the attributes is affected by consumer socio-demographic characteristics and shopping behaviour.

An internet survey of 1,575 Swedish consumers was conducted. A large set of attributes was rated by the participants on seven-point scales with respect to their importance for choice of grocery store. Principal component analysis (PCA) resulted in a reduced set of reliably measured aggregated attributes. This set included the attractiveness attributes price level, supply range, supply quality, service quality, storescape quality, facilities for childcare, and closeness to other stores, and the accessibility attributes easy access by car, easy access by other travel modes, and availability (closeness to store and opening hours).

The results showed that accessibility by car is the most important grocery store attribute, storescape quality and availability the next most important and facilities for childcare the least important. It was also found that socio-demographic factors and shopping behaviour have an impact on the importance of the store attributes.

A comprehensive set of attractiveness and accessibility attributes of grocery stores that can be standardized and used in empirical research is established. The results are valid for the Swedish-European conditions that differ from the conditions in North America where most previous research has been conducted. The results reveal the relative importance grocery-shopping consumers place on controllable attractiveness attributes compared to uncontrollable accessibility attributes as well as the relative importance of the attributes within each category.

This paper aims to get an understanding of the determinants of unscheduled store visits during daylight‐saving time so that retail service providers may be able to encourage shoppers to expand their purchases during their sporadic store visits.

From the survey data, two econometric models were constructed, which predicted frequencies and times of shoppers' unscheduled grocery purchases. Based on the findings and behavioural principles, a conceptual model is defined for motivating shoppers to expand their purchases during their intermittent store visits.

A considerable number of consumers make unscheduled grocery store visits to their principal grocery stores when the store is kept open during daylight‐saving time. Shoppers are, however, not likely to make significant purchases during these irregular visits.

Future research could examine changes in shopping behaviour from the switch back of the clock when DST is over.

Grocery stores who employ more resources, hoping to take advantage of the increased consumer inclination to visit stores during daylight‐saving time, may struggle to recover their operating costs.

The preparedness of consumers to break out of their work and social activities and visit their principal grocery service providers after business hours during daylight‐saving time suggests that these consumers could be motivated, based on the principle of hierarchy of needs, to elaborate on the benefits of the store's augmented and engaging services at this time and expand their purchases during these visits.

Saturation of retail stores, at national and local levels, is a cause for concern in Britain. Attempts to define saturation in grocery retailing and to investigate its relationships with market penetration and catchment area size. Discusses the differing views of commentators and retailers, and considers saturation in the light of the intensifying competition between a small number of major grocery retailers. Explores the implications of this process of competition through a theoretical analysis and case studies of apparent saturation within local markets. Concludes that grocery store development can and will continue even when local markets appear to be saturated and looks briefly at the implications for retail planning.

In recent years there have been many inquiries and studies by government agencies, media reporters, and academic institutions about pricing accuracy at retail stores that use scanners. Some of these reports have even accused retailers of using scanners to intentionally overcharge customers. This study is based on checking 146,518 items in over 2,000 stores in nine states. Analysis of these data found a price accuracy rate of 96.13 per cent with undercharges occurring more frequently than overcharges. In addition, there was a statistically significant difference between pricing accuracy at grocery stores and other retail stores. Grocery stores recorded a higher accuracy level. There is still room for improvement. Only 58 per cent of the stores inspected reached a 98 per cent pricing accuracy standard recommended by the National Conference of Weights and Measures.

The overall purpose of this study is to enhance the understanding of customer perceived service quality within grocery retailing in a North European context. We do this by comparing customer perceived service quality evaluations of the traditional supermarket store with evaluations of the discount store.

This study is based on empirical data from four store cases (two traditional and two discount stores), including information gained from a total of 542 respondents. In the study, we have used and tested a model of grocery store service quality, presented in Vázquez et al. (2001), with structural equation modelling (LISREL) and traditional multivariate analysis (SPSS).

The ability of the Vázquez et al. (2001) model to capture customer perceived quality was below 40 per cent for both concepts which signals limited relevance and that important dimensions in the service evaluation could be missing for both of the two concepts, at least in a North European context. The results show that the traditional supermarket outperforms the discount stores on all service aspects but availability and reliability. When comparing the determinants of the service quality evaluation, the two concepts are very similar. Finally, the overall results regarding determinants of service quality show resemblance to retail studies in other countries and cultures.

This study has been limited to investigate service quality in Sweden and from two out of at least five possible retail concepts. As the explanatory power of the model is limited, future studies should explore other possible determinants of service quality, e.g. the role of technological innovations.

Kotler and Keller (2012) proposes five generic differentiation strategies: product, service, people, channels and image. The results suggest that traditional grocery stores that choose to differentiate and position themselves by focusing on service rather than physical product differentiation should work with assortment issues as well. In order to decide which aspect of service to choose and promote, companies should emphasise differences that are considered important by customers, distinct from competitors and superior in terms of delivering the overall benefit – in this case – in terms of service quality. The results show that the policy dimension would satisfy all three criterions.

The study enhances the understanding of customer perceived service quality within grocery retailing, specifically in comparison between the supermarket and the discount store concept.

This study is the first to focus on whether there is a divergence in service quality and service quality measuring between the traditional supermarket concept and the growing discount concept, and if so to what extent. Furthermore, it is a test of a model that has gained acceptance in Latin and South European countries, but in the context of Northern Europe.