Identifying the success factors in e‐grocery home delivery

Efforts in the electronic grocery shopping, i.e. e‐grocery business, focus especially on the physical distribution of the goods. For example, in the USA there are several e‐grocery service providers with various operating concepts and offering various service levels. The home delivery concept of Streamline is based on a reception box at the customer’s garage or home yard enabling unmanned reception. In contrast, WebVan has launched a home delivery concept where the customer can select a convenient half an hour delivery time window. Various service concepts have been implemented and offered, but has anyone really analysed the differences in cost structures of these two and of other concepts in between the two extremes? Investigates existing home delivery service concepts from different angles and presents concrete simulation results of various parameters representing several home delivery service levels. Eventually, identifying the parameters will give guidelines for the future development of the e‐grocery home delivery services.