Introduction: online grocery shopping – current and future challenges and opportunities

As Guest Editors for the special issue of Electronic Commerce Research on "Online Grocery Shopping -Current and Future Challenges and Opportunities", we are delighted to announce its release.Online grocery shopping (OGS) has surged in popularity and significance in recent years, with the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating this trend.Although OGS offers numerous benefits, such as convenience and flexibility, many questions remain about its impact on the retail industry and consumer behavior.The rise of OGS necessitates new insights for retailers and manufacturers, as they may need to adapt their marketing strategies and analytics to this new sales channel.To reduce the current uncertainty in the field of OGS, this special issue is dedicated to presenting new research on this broad topic.This special issue features numerous high-quality research papers covering a wide spectrum of electronic commerce research.Kumar et al. 1 provide a comprehensive literature review on OGS, offering readers a holistic overview of the developments in OGS research within the scientific literature.Other publications in this special issue focus on technology in the context of OGS.For instance, Bruni et al. 2 examine how the metaverse impacts marketing and competition in both offline and online retail.Upadhyay et al. 3 analyze the influence of customer experience in mobile food ordering applications on reuse intention.Additionally, Rohden and Espartel 4 investigate consumer reactions to recommendation agents in their research on technology related to OGS.