Mobile application e-grocery retail adoption challenges and coping strategies: a South African small and medium enterprises’ perspective

This paper explores how small and medium-sized e-grocery mobile application retailers evolving within the geographical context of South Africa and operating in the urban, township, and rural areas respond to theoretically and emerging field-based e-business and e-grocery adoption challenges, respectively. The study used semi-structured qualitative interviews to explore the coping strategies of e-grocery mobile application retailers to mitigate technological, organizational, and environmental (TOE) adoption challenges. The significance of small grocery adoption strategies related to context informs e-grocery adoption from the evidence generated in other small e-grocers and for the superior grade of TOE (or theoretical) knowledge sought from the inevitable evolving mobile application and digital grocery markets. The findings reveal that specialist skills and unified team production are crucial conduits for lowering the TOE barriers to e-business and e-grocery adoption. They also reveal the interconnected resource orchestration, shared value, and social inclusion strategies used to mitigate various e-business and e-grocery challenges. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10660-023-09698-1.