E-grocery delivery channels: acceptance of the click and collect solutions

Abstract

ABSTRACT Over the last decades, e-grocery has spread less quickly than other retail e-channels due to technical (logistics, cold chain management) and commercial reasons (little acceptance by consumers) thus remaining a niche phenomenon. The Covid19 pandemic has given a boost to the development of e-grocery as many brick-and-mortar supermarkets chains have deployed specific industrial projects to provide omnichannel grocery shopping solutions. Rather than focusing on an online strategy only, brick-and-mortar companies have indeed adopted strategies such as the click and collect delivery models. While the technological, organisational and business dimensions of such solutions have been widely explored, there are still few studies exploring the acceptance of these specific solutions by customers as the new normal grocery shopping. This study aims at investigating the acceptance and intention to use of these solutions by the customers of a prominent supermarket chain in Italy. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology was adopted for the study. An online purchase frequency moderator was added to the model to check whether there are differences among retail and grocery purchases.