The one that got away

: factors influencing the decision to stop using e-grocery platforms

Abstract

E-grocery is a growing trend in the retail industry that provides convenience and time-saving benefits to customers. However, customer retention remains a challenge for e-grocery platforms. This study aims to explore the main factors that cause customers to stop using e-grocery platforms. To investigate the phenomenon, we conducted 31 in-depth phone interviews with former customers of Mercadão – a well-known Portuguese e-grocery platform. The results found that (1) customers who tend to leave the service are mainly female, 40 to 49 years old, have children and typically a lower annual income; (2) the nine main factors that drive customers to stop using the studied service are convenience, economic, and product-related factors, relation with the grocery store, personnel service quality, regulations, brand communication, environmental, and service coolness factors. Based on findings, the study discusses the contribution to theory and provides actionable managerial implications to managers of e-grocery platforms on how to improve their customer retention strategies by addressing these antecedents of customer churn, and tries to provide solutions including optimizing the advantages, such as channel convenience, while reducing price.

Date of Award	13 Jul 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Maher Georges Elmashhara (Supervisor)