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Digitally enabling sustainable food shopping: App glitches, practice conflicts, and digital failure

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  • Fuentes, Christian
  • Cegrell, Olivia
  • Vesterinen, Josefine

Abstract

New digital food platforms are being launched accompanied with the promise of also promoting more sustainable food consumption. However, despite some success, many of these efforts to digitally reconfigure consumers food practices fail. The aim of this paper is to empirically explore, conceptualize and explain such failures. Taking a practice theory approach, and drawing on a field experiment using the Karma app – an anti-food waste app – the paper shows that the inability of this app to promote a new way of acquiring food is due to glitches - app failures of different sorts - but also practice conflicts. Two types of practice conflicts, practice mismatch and practice competition, make the fostering of a new sustainable food provisioning practice difficult.

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  • Fuentes, Christian & Cegrell, Olivia & Vesterinen, Josefine, 2021. "Digitally enabling sustainable food shopping: App glitches, practice conflicts, and digital failure," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:61:y:2021:i:c:s0969698921001120
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2021.102546
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Hai Tran, Van & Sirieix, Lucie, 2020. "Shopping and cross-shopping practices in Hanoi Vietnam: An emerging urban market context," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
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    Cited by:

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    2. Sandra Rousseau & Machteld Joly & Eline Poelmans, 2024. "Search characteristics, online consumer ratings, and beer prices," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(4), pages 804-824, October.
    3. Guandalini, Ilaria, 2022. "Sustainability through digital transformation: A systematic literature review for research guidance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 456-471.
    4. Robert Finger, 2023. "Digital innovations for sustainable and resilient agricultural systems," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 50(4), pages 1277-1309.
    5. Chidchanok Inthong & Thanapong Champahom & Sajjakaj Jomnonkwao & Vuttichai Chatpattananan & Vatanavongs Ratanavaraha, 2022. "Exploring Factors Affecting Consumer Behavioral Intentions toward Online Food Ordering in Thailand," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-17, July.
    6. Magno, Francesca & Cassia, Fabio, 2024. "Predicting restaurants’ surplus food platform continuance: Insights from the combined use of PLS-SEM and NCA and predictive model comparisons," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    7. Belén Derqui & Viachaslau Filimonau, 2024. "The (de)motives for using food waste reduction apps among hospitality providers," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(6), pages 7262-7277, December.
    8. David Ziegler & Sebastian Wolff & Ana-Beatrice Agu & Giorgio Cortiana & Muhammad Umair & Flore de Durfort & Esther Neumann & Georg Walther & Jakob Kristiansen & Markus Lienkamp, 2023. "How to Measure Sustainability? An Open-Data Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-23, February.

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