A comparative study between fully digital retailers and partly digital retailers on the Swedish sports nutrition market

Abstract

Digitalization has a big impact on the retailing market. Customer behaviour is changing towards an increasing preference for digital sales channels. It is a challenge for companies to adapt to the rapid market changes. Barriers of market entry for digital retailers are decreasing and the competition is getting tougher. Some actors are trying to integrate their physical and digital sales channels whereas others only focus on E-commerce. This master thesis investigates retailers on the Swedish sports nutrition market, which is an unexplored research topic. A comparative study was conducted to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of fully and partly digital retailers. Additionally, differences regarding E-commerce between the different business strategies were identified. Four companies were interviewed to provide qualitative data for the study. The empirical findings were analysed and compared to relevant existing literature before any conclusions could be made. Parts of the empirical data served as a brief market analysis to contextualize the findings.