Abstract
The advent of the Internet has significantly changed consumption patterns and habits. Online grocery shopping is a way of purchasing food products using a web-based shopping service. The current COVID-19 pandemic is determining a rethinking of purchase choice elements and of consumers’ behavior. This work aims to investigate which characteristics can affect the decision of online food shopping during the pandemic emergency in Italy. In particular, the work aims to analyze the effects of a set of explanatory variables on the level of satisfaction for the food online shopping experience. For achieving this aim, the proportional odds version of the cumulative logit model is carried out. Data derive from an anonymous on-line questionnaire administrated during the first months of the pandemic and filled by 248 respondents. The results of this work highlight that people having familiarity with buying food online, that have a higher educational level and consider food online channels easy to use, appear more satisfied for the food online shopping experience. These findings can be crucial for the future green global challenges as online shopping may help to reach competitive advantages for company sustainability.
Highlights
Research BackgroundLately, the use of the Internet for the purchase of goods and services has registered a considerable and heterogeneous diffusion in relation to the category of products, the countries and, within the same, to the areas concerned [1]
Regarding the composition of the family unit, there is a predominance of one component units (58.1%), with respect to those composed of two (20.2%) or more than two components (21.7%). 33.9% of the sample declare to spend on average less than 1 hour every day on the internet; 41.1% of the respondents use Internet at least once a week to purchase food products while 25.4% never use it
14.9% judge highly complex to buy food online and 42.7% say that this complexity is due to the inability to see food products physically; other aspects of the online food shopping experience can influence this judgement
Summary
The use of the Internet for the purchase of goods and services has registered a considerable and heterogeneous diffusion in relation to the category of products, the countries and, within the same, to the areas concerned [1] This rising use of the internet has been facilitated by the growing spread of e-commerce web-site, mobile commerce (m-commerce) applications as mobile-phones online shopping, mobile-payments, and so forth, for different categories of products, including food ones [2,3,4]. Online grocery shopping is a relatively new environment and as a consequence is modest compared to other categories of products, they experienced a continuous growth worldwide, estimated at around 21% per year in the period 2014–2019 (for more information, please see Reference [8]) gaining more and more popularity among consumers The latter ([9]) estimated a worldwide online shopping market of nearly 190 billion US dollars in 2019, predicting a composed annual growth rate of 24.8% (2020–2027 time period). Online grocery shopping offers several advantages, among which the opportunity to access and compare on-line numerous categories of products, not available in local markets, access varied and large amount of information (image, list of ingredients and allergens and others that are parts of a compulsory labelling system), as well as make the purchase at any time of the day and receive the product directly at home, and reduces the physical effort to go shopping, saving time and money [12,13,14]
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