Food and grocery retail logistics issues: A systematic literature review

The food and grocery retail sector is undergoing a deep transformation fuelled by customers’ changing habits and new digital technologies. The logistics in this area is often challenging, especially considering the food characteristics and regulations. However, despite the relevance of the topic, the extant body of the scientific literature regarding the role of logistics in the food and grocery sector appears quite fragmented. This paper presents a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) aiming at consolidating the knowledge, analyse the development, clarify the trends and main topics, and highlight the gaps in the scientific literature concerning the role of supply chain and logistics in the food and grocery retail sector. Through the analysis of a corpus of 56 articles, the most critical research contributions on food and grocery retail logistics are discussed, highlighting the main trends over the years, as well as the applied research methods. Finally, starting from literature gaps, future research directions are identified.