Mobile application e-grocery retail adoption challenges and coping strategies: a South African small and medium enterprises’ perspective

Marcia Mkansi () and Aaron Luntala Nsakanda ()
Additional contact information
Marcia Mkansi: University of South Africa
Aaron Luntala Nsakanda: Sprott School of Business, Carleton University

Electronic Commerce Research, 2025, vol. 25, issue 1, No 15, 419-464

Abstract: Abstract This paper explores how small and medium-sized e-grocery mobile application retailers evolving within the geographical context of South Africa and operating in the urban, township, and rural areas respond to theoretically and emerging field-based e-business and e-grocery adoption challenges, respectively. The study used semi-structured qualitative interviews to explore the coping strategies of e-grocery mobile application retailers to mitigate technological, organizational, and environmental (TOE) adoption challenges. The significance of small grocery adoption strategies related to context informs e-grocery adoption from the evidence generated in other small e-grocers and for the superior grade of TOE (or theoretical) knowledge sought from the inevitable evolving mobile application and digital grocery markets. The findings reveal that specialist skills and unified team production are crucial conduits for lowering the TOE barriers to e-business and e-grocery adoption. They also reveal the interconnected resource orchestration, shared value, and social inclusion strategies used to mitigate various e-business and e-grocery challenges.

Keywords: Mobile applications; E-grocery retailers; E-business; SME; m-commerce (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10660-023-09698-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:elcore:v:25:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s10660-023-09698-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10660

DOI: 10.1007/s10660-023-09698-1

Access Statistics for this article

Electronic Commerce Research is currently edited by James Westland

More articles in Electronic Commerce Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().