Abstract
E-grocery is becoming more and more popular, involving both pure e-commerce players and physical stores in its development and sales. As a consequence, the last mile delivery model has been heavily modified, with ambiguous final impact on the environment. This paper identifies the key elements germane to e-grocery (demand and supply), discusses e-grocery development and investigates the challenges ahead. In more detail, it presents the results of a stated preference survey on consumers’ channel choices for the grocery market. The survey was carried out in Shanghai (China) in order to investigate different purchase attributes, such as product and delivery service price, product range, lead time, time window and travel time. The paper identifies heterogeneous reactions to alternative service configurations, which allows to estimate market shares for e-grocery, with the in-store option as a reference. Policy implications and operational solutions to improve the sustainability of this renewed last mile delivery model are thus proposed.
Highlights
Nowadays, the Internet has dramatically changed people’s everyday lives and has disrupted and re-combined, both in time and space, the traditional sequences formerly used when performing one’s daily chores, including shopping [1]
This paper focuses on the challenging impact e-grocery development might have on the environment through the investigation of consumers’ shopping trips, as well as freight movements from distribution centers to consumers
Supporting qualitative studies were carried out in order to refine a list of attributes with their levels, compiled in accordance with the available literature on this subject and, in particular, with a previous work conducted in Norway [17]
Summary
The Internet has dramatically changed people’s everyday lives and has disrupted and re-combined, both in time and space, the traditional sequences formerly used when performing one’s daily chores, including shopping [1]. Allows consumers to purchase products/services over the Internet from a seller, drastically altering how to gather, compare and use information as well as the purchase and delivery processes. The evolutional shopping process deeply changes consumers’ behaviour, which has a close relationship with transport [2]. Purchasing groceries (i.e., food, home and personal care items) being the most common and frequent shopping activity, this significantly affects urban freight transport and environment. Modifying channel-shopping choice from store to online can generate both positive and negative effects on transport, depending on both consumers’ behaviour and last mile delivery schemes. It is clear that when consumers purchase online and ask to have their groceries home delivered, freight trips shift from the consumer to the retailer’s side
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