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Introduction
Recent years have led to a growing adoption of online purchasing behaviour (Shi et al. 2021), with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating this phenomenon (Rothengatter et al. 2021). The adoption of digital technologies in food, non-food and service procurement has made a considerable leap across industries, organisations, and society in just a few years (Tiwari, 2022), resulting in behavioural changes and purchasing habits of consumers who opted for online shopping of food to protect their health, due to lockdown measures, teleworking, and out of the comfort of their homes (Bazi et al. 2022).
Granted, the restrictions implemented worldwide caused a significant economic slowdown in industrial sectors in 2020 and 2021 strongly favouring digital activities that experienced strong growth such as contactless delivery, payment methods, augmented reality in online shopping (Modgil et al. 2022), where e-commerce was a sure winner given to COVID-19 context (Higueras-Castillo et al. 2023). Online stores allow easy access and buying products and services regardless of the location of the manufacturer or merchant, for instance, COVID-19 context and post-pandemic context led to an increase in grocery products online (Kawasaki et al. 2022), contributing to operation-scaling under the technological, organizational and environmental factors (Subagja, 2023).
The research is conducted in Romania, an emerging economy, which experienced substantial growth in online buying in the last years (Lup et al. 2020; Burlea-Schiopoiu et al. 2022). Other emerging countries from the region like Hungary (Kemény et al. 2016) or Poland (Bredzel-Skowera and Turek, 2015) also encountered an increase of online sales due to the better internet connectivity, the faster development of online stores, the increased access of the population to technology and internet, as well as the strive for comfort and the ease of use of online technologies (Chmielarz et al. 2022). The later COVID-19 pandemic contributed to a great extent to the increase of online sales on Romania and in other countries of the region (Nagy et al. 2024) like Poland or Hungary, especially due to social distancing enforced by law, vaccination or quarantine. The pandemic has triggered a shift towards mobile commerce (Vinerean et al. 2024), to more efficient delivery solutions, and to a more personalized online customer experience (Afonso et al. 2024).
Research on e-commerce highlights significant links between concepts, such as online...