Barriers to adopting e-grocery : Focus on user experience

Abstract: Electronic commerce is a relatively new concept compared to other Internet applications. Theconcept has grown fast to cover a wide range of products and services and practiced in severalparts of the world. The process of buying and selling Fast Moving Consumer Goods, food andother necessities online is referred to as electronic grocery. Electronic grocery today is builton different types of solutions; purchasing from a grocery store via their webpage and buyingcomplete meal plans delivered with recipes to the consumers home. By purchasing groceriesonline, consumers get the chance to pick and choose from many different solutions andbrands as a result of which they save time and increase accessibility. The dominating products sold through electronic commerce in Sweden are electronics, clothesand shoes. The online grocery business is only 1.4% (2016) of the total grocery business inSweden. This means that electronic grocery seems to have had a relative slow consumeradoption which makes it differ from e-commerce in general. The purpose of this thesis was todiscover what barriers were associated with using e-grocery for Swedish grocery consumersand how these barriers was affected by user experience. This research was conducted with amixed method approach. The purpose was to establish which barriers are the most influentialto consumers choosing to switch from the traditional way of purchasing groceries in physicalstores to purchasing their groceries online. Understanding these barriers helped investigatehuman interaction with information systems. The study was mainly conducted through thedistribution of a self-completion questionnaire with 300 respondents. Results from the questionnaire suggest that user experience may effect consumers choice tousing e-grocery. Statistics demonstrate influences of consumers using e-commerce for othergoods rather than groceries. Some of the main barriers to adopting this new way of purchasinggroceries were quality of fresh groceries, the social factor of purchasing groceries in aphysical store and consumer’s habit. This study will therefore contribute to the field ofinformatics by providing both theoretical and empirical analysis that help distinguish theinfluence e-commerce has on grocery consumers and their daily life. An interesting area forfurther research would be to investigate and compare other demographic factors to getknowledge about how to reach other consumer groups. To pay more attention to elderconsumers and users of information systems, it perhaps would be an interesting direction tosee how e-grocery could improve their everyday lives. E-grocery is an important business toresearch due to the fact that it will probably be both faster and more convenient in the future.