Grocery pickup creation of value: Customers’ benefits vs. spatial dimension

This article examines an Internet grocery shopping model very frequent in the UK and in France: the grocery pickup system. It strives to answer this research questions: does this system create value for consumers? The methodology relies on in-depth interviews with retailers and data from French retail grocery industries. The exploratory approach through experts’ interviews concerning the content of retailers’ selling propositions for consumers reinforces the theoretical framework related to customers’ value and grocery pickup. It appears that long term value could exist through the satisfaction of functional, experiential and relational benefits responsible for the uniqueness of the retailer's positioning. Given the asymmetry between retailers approach and consumer's one, the second part is focused on a particular aspect of the functional benefit: closeness in retailing. Then, an entropy measurement in a French context from two large samples of 1576 hypermarkets and 1473 grocery pickups are conducted. Results show that grocery pickup locations fulfill this sine qua non successful condition. Nevertheless, it is made evidence that this new channel is most of the time developed in overstored areas.