The Great Escape: Why Online Grocery Shoppers Flee and How to Counteract
(A2026-131707)

AUTHORS

Niklas Mergner, FernUniversität in Hagen; Philipp Brüggemann, FernUniversität in Hagen

ABSTRACT

This paper examines drivers of customer churn in Germany’s fast-growing online grocery market. Many customers discontinue online shopping after initial adoption, resulting in high acquisition costs and threatening long-term profitability. The study addresses the underexplored factors behind churn through an event-history analysis using a frailty-adjusted Cox model on household panel data dataset spanning 9.5 million purchases from 2016 to 2023. Psychological, marketing, demographic, macroeconomic, and microeconomic variables are investigated. The findings clarify which factors most influence repeat discontinuation, offering new insights for effective customer retention in the online grocery sector.