Enhancing Customer Loyalty in the E-Food Industry: Examining Customer Perspectives on Lock-In Strategies

Although management consultancies emphasize customer loyalty as an important factor for the profitability of e-food business models and various lock-in strategies are already being used successfully in foreign e-food markets, there is still a lack of implementation among German e-food providers. To derive how customer loyalty strategies should be designed in the German e-food market, this paper focuses on a qualitative-explorative analysis of which determinants characterize loyalty to an e-food provider from the customer’s perspective. The results of the study partly confirm the determinants for customer loyalty in e-commerce in general that have already been identified in other studies. It becomes clear that the consideration of the individual recurring needs of customers significantly strengthens customer loyalty in the e-food market. In addition, the characteristics of the German e-food market show that lock-in strategies from other European markets cannot be transferred to the German e-food market without conceptual adjustments.