Abstract:

This paper describes experiences about the co-operation of a university and a leading grocery store chain in developing online grocery sales through a learning project carried by both marketing and ICT university students. The goal of this exploratory paper is to focus on the field study method application and the experiences of learning and teaching practices in the ecommerce context.

A leading grocery store chain in Finland wanted to boost their online grocery sales, and find new ideas for the development of shopping and logistics practices and processes. Special focus was put on the food and grocery sales, as it is still undeveloped in this region. The grocery store needed more understanding of customer values, expectations and thoughts. These starting points created excellent learning environment for university students to learn online sales and marketing through interviewing customers in the field and innovate new solution proposals with real customers. The students and teachers also used a new table method for improving rapid ideating and the collection of development proposals from the different customers in real interactions at the lobbies of grocery stores where interviews were accomplished.

The study as a whole underlines the importance of innovative methodological approach to capture consumer insight for service innovation and development purposes. Students also motivated to the learning project by gaining direct interaction to different customers in the real context. The marketing and ICT students learned from each other while working together, and the ideating table in the field helped to rapidly structures new ideas and solution proposals, although some practices should be needed to reconsider and improve for the next projects. The company received more detailed customer insight and new fresh ideas for improving the practices of online grocery sales.

Keywords:

Service development, ecommerce, field study method, learning, teaching.