Thesis (M.C.R.P.)--University of Oregon, 2008. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-75). Also available online.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 94-99). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington State University, May 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Aug. 3, 2009). "School of Economic Sciences." Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--Columbia University, 1930. / Cover title. Vita. Published also as University of Buffalo studies in business, no. 4. An expansion and revision of the author's Retail trade mortality in Buffalo, 1918-28. Bibliography: p. 183-188.

Thesis (M.S.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2009. / Directed by Jo Leimenstoll; submitted to the Dept. of Interior Architecture. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed May 6, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 64-67).

Grocery retailing can be recognized as a market with high competitive pressures which requires a focus on the customers and operational efficiencies to stay competitive. Distribution centers play a vital role in grocery retailing since they constitute a significant part of the total cost of logistics. To reach an overall profitability in a company, an effective and efficient distribution is needed. Grocery retailing and distribution challenges has been discussed previously in literature for compact countries whereas a limited focus has been on elongated countries. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate challenges within a grocery retailing distribution operating in an elongated country with numerous sparsely populated areas located far away from the distribution centers. Thus, this thesis aims to contribute to literature considering the detected research gap. This study is developed with an inductive research approach, which aims to generate meanings from the semi-structured interviews in order to identify challenges within a grocery retail distribution to develop theory and generalized conclusions. Furthermore, the thesis follows a qualitative research direction where a single case study has been conducted. Analyzing and comparing the findings revealed 15 challenges in a grocery retail distribution. The main challenge found during this research was the insufficient filling rate of the pallets and trucks when transporting products between distribution centers and the last mile delivery. Furthermore, 9 possibilities to address the challenges with an overall goal of reducing the total cost of logistics was detected for this research.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine what kind of factors that can influence consumers’ intention and how do Swedish consumers evaluate these factors to purchase grocery products through the Internet. Background: E-commerce has been a widespread environment for consumers and online shopping also becomes more and more popular nowadays. However, in Sweden, although there is huge amount of online users, online grocery shopping is still in an early stage. Theory: For this paper the Theory of Planned Behavior was used, as well as a range of factors that are commonly used in existing literature on this field of research. Method: Both quantitative and Qualitative method were used to collect primary data and semi- structured interviews were conducted with participants with similar demographics. Conclusion: Combined with previous literature, questionnaire and interviews conducted, relevant factors are brought up to be analyzed. Situational factors which include perceived product quality, perceived product price, weather, perceived potential risks, delivery cost, delivery time, types of product, and time saving. The study shows that above factors all have impact on online consumers’ purchasing intention with different levels.

This submission for PhD by publication consists of a portfolio of nine peer reviewed and published papers. The research presented in the portfolio contributes to theory, knowledge and discussion in the area of retail marketing. The common theme of the papers is competition in grocery retailing, and specifically the way that retail marketing strategy and supply chain relations affects retail competition and outcomes for consumers. While the nine papers share a common approach in how grocery retailers compete through pricing and product choices along with their trading terms with suppliers, each individual paper addresses a distinctive central question: How does pricing competition change in the wake of a major merger in the retail grocery sector? How do grocery retailers respond in their pricing, promotion and advertising to the onset of a macro-economic crisis? Do grocery retailers encourage excessive consumption of alcohol by under-shifting excise duty increases on cheap alcohol? Why do retailers use value size pricing and offer bargain prices on jumbo-sized sugary drinks that encourages harmful excessive consumption? Is retail buyer power over suppliers detrimental to competition? In what circumstances might the development and promotion of brands and private labels be deleterious to consumers interests? How should competition authorities and practitioners assess the extent of competition between brands and private labels? How can the development of copycat private labels directly mimicking leading brands result in higher overall prices for consumers? Do retailers manipulate grocery prices to favour private labels over brands? Beyond their academic research contribution, the findings and insights provided in the papers both individually and collectively have relevance to retailers, suppliers, consumers, regulators and policymakers in desiring to see an efficient, well-functioning and dynamic grocery retail sector.

Grocery shopping is a routine task that people perform to fulfill their needs for food. We suspect many people would like to do grocery shopping with the grocery list to save their money and time. While creating a grocery list, people have to follow some steps such as checking the ingredients inventory available in their homes, planning meals for few days or weeks, creating a grocery list based on their meal plan and ingredients inventory status, and looking out for deals or offers, which can be utilized in their grocery purchases. These steps can be repetitive and involve people’s manual effort and a considerable amount of time to carry out effectively that makes the creation of a grocery list difficult to accomplish every time considering people’s busy modern lifestyles. As many grocers begin to leverage technology, they have an opportunity to understand the relationship between the people buying behavior from their purchasing history and stores’ grocery information to make profit-driven decisions and promote the reduction of food waste in stores. This thesis presents SmartGrocer, a context-aware personalized grocery system that dynamically gathers user context including their past purchase history and budget, and store context including clearance grocery inventory that consists of those ingredients that are soon-to-expire or being on sale to recommend personalized coupons to users. The personalized coupons are automatically applied to the missing ingredients of recipes thereby reducing the recipes’ cost and recommending them according to the user’s food budget. Recommendation of personalized coupons to users is an effective promotional strategy to not only saving the user’s money but also promoting the reduction of food waste in stores, which eventually drives more profit to the grocery retail businesses. SmartGrocer also automates the whole process of creating a grocery list with minimal effort and time expended by the user by leveraging the user and store context. / Graduate

Background: Since the dawn of internet shopping there has always been consumers who show resistance. Researchers have identified several relevant barriers which inhibit these consumers from shopping online. Now that e-commerce has developed to the point that it could be regarded as mainstream, the resistance that remains is most evident in certain industries, such as the e-grocery industry.        Purpose: To identify which general e-commerce barriers are also applicable to the industry of e-groceries, and to understand the resistance shown towards the sector. Also, to evaluate how countermeasures could impact these barriers.                    Method: A qualitative and abductive approach was used in the study to analyze which barriers are relevant and which are irrelevant. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants located in the south of Sweden who have distinct opinions about e‑groceries and show resistance to embracing their services.         Conclusion: Six of the original ten e-commerce barriers were deemed irrelevant to e-groceries. The other four were relevant and impacted the embrace of e-grocery services for potential customers. Two new barriers specifically linked to e-groceries were discovered. Countermeasures have to a certain degree influenced how customers have managed to overcome certain barriers.