Welcome to the website for the
study "ITR: Internet Disintermediation of Food Delivery - Spanning the
Last Mile", $250,000 study sponsored by the National Science
Foundation. We have been studying the online ordering and home delivery
of groceries since May 2002.
The study includes surveys collected in
2002/2003 of 4,000 online customers of seven different grocers and
interviews with key executives. The grocers participating in the study
include two British companies (Ocado and Sainbury's), four American
firms (Lowes Foods, Albertsons, PublixDirect and FreshDirect) and one
Canadian firm (Grocery Gateway). While financial numbers for these
ventures are tightly guarded, the total revenues for these seven
companies in the online ordering/home delivery sector are well over
$400 million per year. We are currently in the second round of data
collection and conducting surveys of customers with each of the
participating grocers.
The links below provide more detail of
the study, primarily academic research papers that are either under
review for publication or ready for publication. We have a book titled Extending
the Supply Chain: How Cutting-Edge Companies Bridge the Critical Last
Mile into Customers' Homes to be published by AMACOM in September
2004. More details on the book and ordering details are given in the
link for Extending the Supply Chain below.
We hope you enjoy the information on the
website. Please contact us with any questions or to pursue possible
joint projects, research, training or consulting projects.
