Adoption of efficient consumer response: key issues and challenges in Australia

Efficient consumer response (ECR) is an electronic commerce (EC)‐enabled grocery industry supply chain management strategy, which is designed to make the industry more efficient and responsive. Despite the many benefits obtainable from ECR, the adoption rate has been slow in many regions. At this stage, there is no well‐developed theory of adoption of technologies at this wide scale that can explain this slow uptake. This paper explores the experiences of the Australian grocery industry with ECR adoption. In order to obtain a more reliable snapshot of ECR adoption practices, barriers and perceptions, this study employs a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Since the Australian grocery industry has a unique structure, important observations obtained from this study enrich previous ECR adoption studies.