Consumer adoption of online grocery shopping in South Africa

Abstract

Evidence from the surveyed literature shows that most South African consumers still purchase groceries from brick-and-mortar grocery stores (Cloete & Mugobo 2021;Thusi et al. 2022). Although South Africa has a competitive and well-developed retail market, it appears to lag in online grocery retailing (Cloete & Mugobo 2021;Loate, Niemann & Kotze 2017). Even though it is close to two decades since the inception of the first online grocery retailing business, the overall Background: The remarkable proliferation and utilisation of information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as the Internet, has enabled businesses and customers to transact online seamlessly. Increasingly, studies have started paying attention to online shopping. However, there are limited studies with an online grocery shopping (OGS) perspective in developing nations. Objectives: This study aimed to determine the factors influencing consumers' behavioural intention to adopt OGS in the Cape Metropolitan area of South Africa. Method: This study employed quantitative research methods within a positivist research paradigm. It then utilised convenience sampling techniques to collect data (n = 391) in shopping malls in the Cape Metropolitan area using self-administered questionnaires pre-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23. Results:The results showed that only perceived cost (PCo) had a significant influence on consumers' behavioural intention to adopt OGS, while perceived usefulness (PU), visibility (VIS), perceived ease of use (PEOU), perceived image barrier (PIB), perceived risk (PR) and social attractiveness (SAT) had an indirect influence on consumers' behavioural intention to adopt OGS. Conclusion:In this study, PCo was found to influence consumers' behavioural intention to adopt OGS significantly. However, other factors such as PEOU, PU, PR, PIB and SAT indirectly influenced consumers' intention to shop for groceries online. Contribution:As there are limited studies on OGS from a developing nation's perspective, this study makes a theoretical contribution by focusing on the pre-COVID-19 OGS in South Africa. Moreover, the results of this study can help to draw a comparison between the prepandemic and post-pandemic shopping experiences of customers, which is important to understand the effects of the pandemic on consumer behaviour.