The last bastion of stationary trade is falling - the evolution of the e-food market in Germany

For a long time, food retailing seemed to be the last stationary bastion in Germany that online retailing has not been able to penetrate. Due to the Corona pandemic, however, even this bastion seems vulnerable. The stationary supremacy of the food retail trade over decades, however, led to the fact that the stationary major players largely ignored the currently strongly growing e-food market, which could already take its revenge today and even more in the next few years, as more and more new, pure-online retailers enter the market and set the market in motion. In the context of the thesis, the development of the German e-food market since its origin is examined by analyzing the market composition over the years on the basis of the prevailing business models and market participants. For this purpose, all existing e-food business models in Germany were first identified and classified according to their own logic in order to be able to clearly differentiate the individual retailers from each other. The analysis shows an increasing degree of maturity of the e-food market and the first signs of incipient consolidation and strategic cooperation. These will be pushed even more strongly in the next few years due to strong growth and an enormous density of market participants. Currently, no "winning model" is recognizable. The market is large enough and growing strongly, so that there is currently still room for several different business models.