Building an Online Grocery Business: The Case of ASDA.com

Abstract

This chapter uses the case of ASDA.com, ASDA’s home-shopping arm, to demonstrate the challenges in building and developing an online grocery business in the UK. To set the stage, the initial implementation and learning from phone/catalogue home-shopping in ADS is outlined to demonstrate why e-commerce was seen as most economically suitable to conduct a grocery home-shopping business. Then the chapter illustrates the development stages and critical aspects of ASDA.com’s Web shop. Particularly, it delineates the operational aspects of B2C e-commerce in the grocery business: fulfillment center and fulfillment process. The case will also describe ASDA’s efforts in overcoming problems with their home-shopping fulfillment model and present important elements of ASDA.com’s virtual store and its operation. The chapter concludes with the challenges that ASDA.com has been facing, their current status, and future prospects.