Search results

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.

COVID-19 disrupted the lives of consumers across the globe, and the retail sector has been one of the hardest hits. The impact of COVID-19 on consumers' retail choice behaviour and retailers' responses has been studied in detail through multiple lenses. Now that the effect of COVID-19 is abating, there is a need to consolidate the learnings during the lifecycle of COVID-19 and set the agenda for research post-COVID-19.

Scopus database was searched to cull out academic papers published between March 2020 and June 6, 2022, using keywords; shopping behaviour, retailing, consumer behaviour, and retail channel choice along with COVID-19 (171 journals, 357 articles). Bibliometric analysis followed by selective content analysis was conducted.

COVID-19 was a black swan event that impacted consumers' psychology, leading to reversible and irreversible changes in retail consumer behaviour worldwide. Research on changes in consumer behaviour and consumption patterns has been mapped to the different stages of the COVID-19 lifecycle. Relevant research questions and potential theoretical lenses have been proposed for further studies.

This paper collates, classifies and organizes the extant research in retail from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It identifies three retail consumption themes: short-term, long-term reversible and long-term irreversible changes. Research agenda related to the retailer and consumer behaviour is identified; for each of the three categories, facilitating the extraction of pertinent research questions for post-COVID-19 studies.

Perishable inventory management for the grocery sector has become more challenging with extended omnichannel activities and emerging consumer expectations. This paper aims to identify and formalize key performance measures of omnichannel perishable inventory management (OCPI) and explore the influence of operational and market-related factors on these measures.

The inductive approach of this research synthesizes three performance measures (product waste, lost sales and freshness) and four influencing factors (channel effect, demand variability, product perishability and shelf life visibility) for OCPI, through industry investigation, expert interviews and a systematic literature review. Treating OCPI as a complex adaptive system and considering its transaction costs, this paper formalizes the OCPI performance measures and their influencing factors in two statements and four propositions, which are then tested through numerical analysis with simulation.

Product waste, lost sales and freshness are identified as distinctive OCPI performance measures, which are influenced by product perishability, shelf life visibility, demand variability and channel effects. The OCPI sensitivity to those influencing factors is diverse, whereas those factors are found to moderate each other's effects.

To manage perishables more effectively, with less waste and lost sales for the business and fresher products for the consumer, omnichannel firms need to consider store and online channel requirements and strive to reduce demand variability, extend product shelf life and facilitate item-level shelf life visibility. While flexible logistics capacity and dynamic pricing can mitigate demand variability, the product shelf life extension needs modifications in product design, production, or storage conditions. OCPI executives can also increase the product shelf life visibility through advanced stock monitoring/tracking technologies (e.g. smart tags or more comprehensive barcodes), particularly for the online channel which demands fresher products.

This paper provides a novel theoretical view on perishables in omnichannel systems. It specifies the OCPI performance, beyond typical inventory policies for cost minimization, while discussing its sensitivity to operations and market factors.

This paper investigates the impact of sustainability information disclosure on consumers' choice of order-to-delivery lead-time in relation to consumers' sustainability concern.

Based on two choice experiments with participants from the Netherlands (n = 348) and the United Kingdom (n = 1,387), the impact of sustainability information disclosure was examined in connection with consumers' concerns for environmental and social sustainability. Information on environmental impact (carbon emission) and social impact (warehouse workers and drivers' well-being) was considered and compared.

Disclosing sustainability impact information significantly increased consumers' preference and choice for longer delivery times, with equivalent effects for environmental and social impact information. Consumers' relevant (environmental or social) sustainability concern as personality traits enhanced effects on preferences, as did priming of environmental concern.

Future research may consider differences between product categories or e-commerce companies' reputation in sustainability activities.

The findings provide opportunities for online retailers to influence consumer choice of delivery time, especially through disclosing environmental and/or social sustainability information.

This study fills a gap in the literature on sustainability information disclosure to actively steer consumer choice of delivery time, particularly regarding the effect of social sustainability impact information in comparison to its environmental counterpart.

Logistics at work is rapidly changing. The changing trend is especially prominent when considering the active involvement of individuals that perform diverse forms of formal/informal “logistics work” (e.g. crowd logistics and self-collection). Thus, by conducting a synthesised review (n = 55), this study aims to provide a typology of individuals' logistics work.

The total social organisation of labour is used as a guiding framework. A deductive literature analysis is performed based on the identified journal articles.

The review findings reveal three major contexts where individuals perform logistics work: formal organisation, social community and private household, with a decreased level of formality. Under each context, individuals may be engaged in paid or unpaid activities, creating six forms of logistics work, termed as paid/voluntary professional logistics, incentivised/friendly social logistics and rewarded/free consumer logistics. Furthermore, an actor–sphere–resource–value conceptualisation of individual logistics is proposed, focussing on the chains of actors, work settings, resource input and value outcome.

The results provide a theoretical foundation for further research in individual- or consumer-centrism in logistics. Two research directions and seven research questions are presented for future investigation.

This paper explores the orchestration of digital innovation in Industry 4.0 organisations.

The study applies the activity theory to explorative multiple case studies. Observations of innovation activities in five business cases take place at two large international organisations.

The results underline five logics of action that drive digital innovation: (1) digital transformation, (2) technology translation, (3) catalyst agents, (4) digital thread and (5) empowerment. Further, the case study organisations highlight the importance of developing a sustainable culture capable of continuously adopting new technologies, processes and infrastructure that will allow the management of digital innovations.

The study empirically shows the motivations and challenges in orchestrating digital innovation in Industry 4.0 organisations.

This research aims to conceptualize and validate the mall service design as a multidimensional construct and then test a conceptual framework by investigating the impact of mall service design on customer mall experience and its subsequent outcomes, that is, intention to revisit and desire to stay in mega shopping malls.

The survey data of 455 shopping visitors in Pakistan were collected using a mall intercept technique and tested through structural equation modeling in AMOS.

The study reveals that service design significantly impacts customer experience and subsequent outcomes. Customer mall experience mediates the relationships between mall service design and the intention to revisit and desire to stay at malls.

Data from a collectivist culture country (Pakistan) were collected. To explore the impact of service design on customer mall experience, researchers should conduct similar studies in individualistic societies like Europe and North America. Additionally, the authors recommend assessing the effect of each dimension of service design on customer experience separately.

The research provides policy guidelines for the owners and operators of mega shopping malls in developing experience-oriented retailing strategies based on service design.

The research conceptualizes and validates the mall service design as a multidimensional construct using the service theater model and empirically tests its relationship with the customer mall experience.

The COVID-19 situation affected the whole landscape of retailing in India and around the world. However, some businesses have used the pandemic-related difficulties into opportunities. E-tailing is one of the ways that helped people in India to continue shopping their essential products and choosing their luxury products without making any physical visits during the lockdown. This research understands the current situation through an observation study and suggests the e-tailing model suitable during the COVID-19 and beyond.

We used secondary data to make the observational study. We also conducted two case studies and interviews with grocery shops and an automotive company.

This research suggests a simple collaborative e-tailing model combining all supply chain players to reduce people’s movement, timely delivery and enhanced service to meet customers demand during the lockdown period.

This paper has considered two real cases for discussion and also obtained information from public domain. The proposed model has been discussed with the case companies, and it hoped to support business planning for online services.

Building on stimulus organism response theory, the current study examines the influence of pickup service quality of buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS) service on the BOPIS users' satisfaction, trust and commitment, subsequently leading to customer citizenship behavior (CCB). It examines the proposed relationships against boundary conditions, product categories and gender.

The research is descriptive, quantitative and cross-sectional investigation. It was conducted using data collected from 401 Indian omnichannel shoppers using a validated self-administered questionnaire. The proposed conceptual model was tested using Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) and Partial Least Squares-Multi-group analysis (PLS-MGA).

The results indicate that pickup service quality in BOPIS positively impacts all the dimensions of relationship quality of the BOPIS users. Satisfaction and commitment directly affect CCB. However, trust impacts CCB indirectly through commitment. The moderating effect of the product category purchased and gender on specified relationships was tested. Results revealed the impact of pickup service quality on BOPIS users' trust and commitment differed across product categories. More impact was seen among users who purchased shopping and specialty goods. The study also found that trust-driven citizenship behavior was seen more among female BOPIS users when compared to males.

The study is carried out on the Indian population, where omnichannel retailing is still nascent.

This study addresses the gap to investigate the value co-creation behavior (CCB) in the omnichannel retail context among BOPIS users. This study is the first to show that in-store pickup service quality in BOPIS might affect customer citizenship behavior through relationship quality dimensions, assessed against boundary conditions such as the product category and BOPIS user gender.

Although buy-online-and-pick-up-in-store (BOPS) has been widely implemented by companies, scant attention has been paid to its effect on consumer experience and the concomitant outcomes. Using the psychological ownership theory, this study aims to examine whether and how the BOPS experience (vs online experience) can enhance consumer loyalty.

Study 1 investigated the consumer loyalty of shopping experience (self-pickup vs delivery) on actual consumer behavior through secondary data. Studies 2, 3 and 4 were controlled experiments to further investigate the mediating effect of product psychological ownership, and the moderating effects of product type and postdecision experience valence.

The authors found that BOPS shopping led to higher consumer loyalty (i.e. repeat purchase and repeat purchase frequency) compared with online shopping. Furthermore, the authors examined that this effect was mediated by product psychological ownership and moderated by product type and postdecision experience valence.

Theoretical speculations about how BOPS shopping affects consumer experience should be probed in future research.

Retailers with physical stores can offer in-store pickup options for their online consumers to increase their product psychological ownership and consumer loyalty. And the positive effects of the BOPS strategy relied on product type and postdecision experience valence.

This research offers theoretical contributions to research on the BOPS strategy, psychological ownership theory and consumer loyalty.