The Research Topics on E-Grocery: Trends and Existing Gaps

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse through a systematic literature review the main topics studied on a relatively new concept: e-grocery. This study examines the existing literature through the use of some interactive Scopus applications with the goal to provide: (1) a better understanding of the main topics that have been analysed up to now; (2) the principal methodologies that have been used; and (3) the challenges that still exist as well as literature gaps. First, we provide a summary of what has been previously researched in the field, analysing the trends regarding time, sources, authors, countries and document types. Then, tokenization, and a natural language process (NLP) that applies the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) method, is used to extract the main topics in the field. We obtain that the research topics in the discipline have always been linked with technological changes, innovation and diffusion, and environmental effects have been a cornerstone since the origin of the field. In comparison with other fields in transport economics, we notice that experimental design and choice modelling are not very popular. As a step towards future research, we propose an integrative framework for e-grocery consumer behaviour that starts from the Engel–Kollat–Blackwell (EKB) model.

Why Do Retail Customers Hesitate for Shopping Grocery Online?

“…Attempts to start online grocery sales have also attracted research teams and the number of articles on OGS has increased. Martín et al (2019) observed the yearly increase of studies on OGS from 2000 to 2017 and also pointed that in the marketing area, many studies compared the advantages and disadvantages between e-commerce and physical retail. For instance, Degeratu et al (2000) studied the importance of brand names, Danaher et al (2004) compared brand loyalty of online and offline consumer, Andrews and Currim (2004) or Šarkovská and Chytková (2019) analysed differences in shopping behaviour and Huyghe et al (2016) compared the channels with regards to healthy grocery shopping.…”

The Future of Grocery Shopping? A Taxonomy-Based Approach to Classify E-Grocery Fulfillment Concepts

“…Overall, most of the recent publications regarding e-grocery deal with assessing, quantifying and benchmarking potential impacts of an increasing e-grocery utilization [12,13,16,17,19,25,27,30,31], analyzing the consumer behavior [3,14,15,24], providing a status quo [7,18,22,23,29] or evaluating the ecologic impact of diverse fulfillment concepts [2,28]. Concerning logistics, several studies propose, conceptualize or examine different models, whereby manifold publications are directly related to assessing or comparing the individual practical impact [6,11,20,21].…”

“…Since the beginning of the 21 st century, the relevance of e-grocery has significantly increased in scientific literature [7]. Nevertheless, during our initial literature review in July 2019, where we scanned e-grocery literature in Google Scholar and AISel with the search phrases ("e-grocery" OR "grocery home delivery" OR "online grocery") AND ("Classification" OR "Taxonomy" OR "Structure"), we only found a few articles attempting to classify fulfillment concepts within this context.…”

“…Existing studies investigate the potential impact of e-grocery on traffic and emissions [2], synopsize general market characteristics [3 -5] or aim at developing new solutions for optimizing the operational performance by means of different information systems [6]. Nevertheless, as no consolidated overview about grocery fulfillment concepts exists [7], there is a need for a taxonomy to structure existing models and determine ideal channel structures to foster e-grocery market growth and utilization.…”

Grocery Delivery or Customer Pickup—Influences on Energy Consumption and CO2 Emissions in Munich

“…Davis and Figliozzi [11] integrated FEVs in their study and calculated economic break-even points, depending on different parameters. Martín et al [19] analyzed trends and research gaps in the field of e-groceries, which can be seen as directly related to the delivery of foodstuffs. Their investigations showed that this research topic plays a minor role in Germany in recent years.…”