Electronic commerce in the food retail industry: a case study comparison of virtual grocers' and virtual meal retailers' strategies and business processes

This research focused on an emerging area of virtual retailing in the food retail industry. There is a paradigm shift in the way consumers are interacting with retailers within fundamental business processes due to the exploitation of new virtual retail channels. It reports on the results of an investigation of strategies and business processes of virtual food retailers. The research was based on intensive case study interviews. An objective of this research was to provide a deeper understanding of the key issues for successful implementation of business-to consumer e-commerce. An additional focus was to examine what changes are needed to the traditional concepts of service marketing to address e commerce. The cases' were analyzed within the context of the marketing mix 7Ps. There were differences in the approach of brick food retailers who added a virtual retail channel and virtual only food retailers as described in the analysis. There were also differences in the business process strategies between intermediaries and in-house implementation virtual retailers. This research found that the e-food retailers must address the fundamental business aspects presented by the 7Ps. These business fundamentals are not "thrown out the door" in the virtual world; however, to utilize the virtual tools effectively the 7Ps need to be viewed through a new lens. Two original contributions from this research are the Virtual Order Cycle and the discovery of a new sub-segment of E-commerce called Local E-commerce