How can we improve buyer experiences for the operations of e-grocery platforms? Towards a unified framework for digital service operations

Abstract

Electronic grocery (e-grocery) retailing has increasingly gained prominence all over the world, with India being no exception. However, the Indian e-grocery industry still has room to grow. Existing studies have not attempted to focus holistically on factors related to service operations, such as customer service and digital platforms. We undertake two case studies, each having an exploratory and a confirmatory study, on India's two popular e-grocery apps. We mine 273,000 and 254,000 buyer reviews to identify factors affecting their experiences in the exploratory studies. We model these factors through the lens of customer-dominant logic (CDL), service-dominant logic (SDL), and signaling theory. We develop an overarching framework by mapping these factors to theoretical lexicons for the confirmatory studies. Multiple econometric analysis helps us to confirm that trust in the vendor, consumer learning, retailer visibility, pricing, diagnosticity of product description, third-party product assurances, navigability, website informativeness, and perceived information protection influence the buyer experience of both e-grocery platforms significantly. These insights can help managers take appropriate decisions to improve buyer experience and thus expand their customer base.