Is fresh food shopping sticky to retail channels and online platforms? Evidence and implications in the digital era

Using home‐scan data set from Kantar Worldpanel, we conduct an empirical study on Chinese urban consumer shopping behavior from online and offline channels, using yogurt as an example. Results confirm the advantages of E‐commerce relative to traditional offline retail channel in terms of keeping consumers loyal. Results also indicate the online and offline markets are of different business models, in that the online market is a separate market from offline even for the same brand. There exists evidence of brand loyalty for online shoppers but not offline. However, it is more challenging for online late entrants to build brand loyalty because consumers are price sensitive online. Firms are recommended to think of new and differentiated products online, which focus more on quality instead of price to catch the young generation with increasing income.