Online Food for Brick and Mortar Retailers: State of the Art in Italy

Abstract

Abstract-In contemporary entrepreneurial environment based on customer retention, the growth of the internet has pushed the most dynamic businesses to compete in the electronic market. The recent evolvement of the Internet as a new major distribution channel has obtained much attention, as the online channel calls the viability of traditional stationary retailing into question. Today, since innovation is a key factor in the Digital Age, the presence in the digital marketplace is essential for retailers, also in the food retailing. The paper aims to analyze the online commerce for food groceries. The sample represents the 99% of Italian brands of brick and mortar supermarkets and hypermarket. Through the visit of every Internet site and some interviews to managers, this paper proposes the reasons why only a limited number of grocery brands sell food over Internet. Characteristics of goods (freshness, perishability, cold chain warranty, etc.), expensive operations needed to prepare the delivery, cost of delivery, and difficult reverse logistics are the main causes of low adoption of ecommerce. The few cases of food ecommerce offer product delivery only in a limited radius of certain big cities.