Improving the Retail Grocery Supply Chain through Mobile Shopping of Electronically Referenced Products

The grocery industry is one of the largest and most important industries, with supermarkets and grocery stores being amongst the most popular and diverse businesses. This evolution would not have been possible without effective supply chain management. However, contemporary supply chains, especially those of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), still conceal numerous inefficiencies, mainly in Panos Kourouthanassis, George M. Giaglis, Georgios I. Doukidis, Vassilis Pergioudakis 264 the collaboration between trading partners, which heavily affect the overall replenishment process. These inefficiencies imply that opportunities for further improvements can be identified. The MyGROCER concept aims at exploring these opportunities to provide an effective solution to the inefficiencies of the retail grocery supply chain through mobile shopping of electronically referenced grocery products. The MyGROCER business and technology framework exploits the opportunities that emerging telecommunication and mobile commerce technologies, coupled with automatic product identification technologies, provide to enable an efficient home replenishment schema, to enhance the quality of service provided by retailers, and ultimately to add value to the consumer. This paper discusses the rationale behind this concept, identifies a number of pertinent research themes, and concludes with a critical appraisal of its market potential.