The Efficiency of Infrastructural Support for Food E-Commerce in Ukraine at the Stage of Transition to Industry 5.0

Crisis factors, in particular the COVID-19 pandemic and the full-scale war, have significantly increased the importance of developing food e-commerce in Ukraine. This article aims to assess the effectiveness of infrastructure support for food e-commerce in Ukraine and clarify the relationship between e-commerce components and the human-centric principles of Industry 5.0. The research methodology includes general scientific and special methods (abstract-logical and system analysis, analytical grouping method, block approach, rating assessment, inductive approach, and comparative analysis). The authors structured the infrastructure components and assessed their impact on the range of online sales products, the availability of food products, and the territorial coverage of food e-commerce. The article substantiates the rating of food product groups within the general structure of e-commerce, proposes a classification of food products by logistical complexity, and summarizes the features of payment, financial, and regulatory and institutional infrastructure. The results of the study indicate that food e-commerce in Ukraine functions as a complex infrastructure system in which digital channels, trading platforms, logistics chains, financial mechanisms, and the regulatory environment interact in a single value chain. The basic conditions for the development of e-commerce in Ukraine have already been created, as about 80% of the country's population constantly uses the Internet. The share of omnichannel models in the structure of online food sales in 2024 increased to 46%, indicating a high level of integration between digital and physical channels and characterizing this model as the most effective at present. The functions of each infrastructure component are aimed at forming a sustainable e-commerce system that is designed to solve important problems of human development, which is consistent with the principles of the transition to Industry 5.0. The results of this study may be useful: to market operators when forecasting product stocks and finding investments in the development of warehouse capacities, creating new network trade platforms; to authorities, when stimulating the development of an integrated logistics network; to economic professionals, teachers, and students as a source of research data in further studies.