Driving to the store, finding parking, defective carts, difficulties in finding items, poor product info, long lines for checkout, unclear receipts, carrying heavy shopping bags home, and forgotten items are some of the most common barriers experienced by grocery shoppers. These are also the most common reasons why shoppers decide to switch to alternative retailers or to online grocery channels. COVID-19 accelerated this trend with online grocery shopping and home delivery services became prevalent and grew significantly during the pandemic (Gupta & Mukhejee, 2022). Today, e-grocery has reached 11% of the total grocery sales and being expected to reach 19% by 2025 in US (source: Statista, 2022). Brick and mortar grocery retailers declare to suffer from low loyalty of their customer and margin pressure. On the other side, the recent investments of online pure players such as Amazon and Alibaba in physical retail, including grocery, show that the physical shopping has still potential to lead retailers’ growth, also within grocery. Grocery retailers should therefore find new ways to attract and retain customers to their stores. Offering a better customer experience (CE) may be a valuable strategy to this end. A great CE has emerged at the base of a sustainable competitive advantage for companies, and it is at the heart of customer loyalty (Grewal et al., 2017) in several sectors but has often been neglected within grocery selling.

• Monica Grosso(Emlyon Business School)
• Giulia Miniero(Franklin University Switzland)
• Sandro Castaldo(SDA Bocconi University)