Going Digital: SMEs Based Food E-commerce Engaging Customer through Customer Needs-Driven

This study explores food e-commerce engages customer to their needs, wants and lifestyle towards food purchase in the transition of retail revolution era. The focus is given to the customer engagement for co-creation process from the seller’s perspective. The study was carried in Indonesia by applying an inductive research approach using in-depth interviews with multiple food e-commerce company’s management (n=8). A six-stage of thematic analysis was applied using NVivo 12 software. The study showed that customer curiosity, customer buying behaviour change, customer food lifestyle changes and more demanding consumers underlying customer-needs driven. The SMEs proactively respond to consumer needs by communicating the expected benefits of food purchase via online channels. It activates the role of customer as value co-creator through familiarising food shopping based-online channel and experiencing the food online channel usage. The process of B2C value co-creation of food e-commerce is described as a process of gaining customer attention, role understanding, interaction, learning, intervention and making consumers discover. The transition stage of retail revolution of SME-based food ecommerce in developing countries demonstrates a conceptual process of value co-creation while exploring the customer needsdriven to this specific context. Both scholars and practitioners could learn from consumer behaviour changes displayed on online food purchase by managing each role and resources accordingly