Grocery shopping through touch points: expectations and reality
Résumé
The emergent literature about omni-channel retailing invits to tackle the consumer's journey issue, that is to say the complex patronizing scenarios not only across physical stores and Internet websites but also communication touch points (social networks or mobile applications). Academic research about omni-channel retailing is still scarce on grocery shopping, especially on fresh products. Yet, the multiplication of transactional and relational touch points creates more complex grocery shopping journeys. Hyper and supermarkets stay the most patronized, but e-commerce attracts more and more consumers with the boom of drives and other devices (such as boxes, Amazon Pantry, click & collect solutions, etc.). Moreover, research on grocery shopping (Elms et al., 2016 ; Mareï et al. 2016) underline that the consumer of fresh products uses different distribution formats to make purchases. In particular, different shopping venues combine to meet daily needs. Therefore, based on an academic and empirical literature review, this research aims at contributing to the question of who will be the future retailers by investigating the grocery shopping consumers' journeys and proposes a research agenda.