Developing Mobile E-Groceries Model
In a traditional groceries market, various business models have been implemented. Most of these models failed due to e-grocery retailing process. This has led to many inefficient operation of the groceries market in many parts of the world. Previous studies have shown the application and success of e-Groceries system in a web based scheme. This paper tries to develop a prototype for e-Groceries system on android platform suitable for most mobile devices. The system’s objective includes introducing a new way of grocery shopping especially for Malaysians. The development of the system follows the generic software development process. Thus we provide a detailed system development and its implementation. During implementation we call the system as MyMart e-Groceries system. Users can select various types of groceries in a simple and friendly mobile user interface and pay for the selected choice, which will be subsequently delivered to their door steps. Keywords: mobile application; mini navigation; apps inventor; android
Online shopping provides an easier means of purchasing product and gets them through physical delivery. Current local online shopping in Malaysia involves both product and services. They are mostly seen in a hotel business, flight ticket, apparel, take-out food and many more. There are much skepticism on ordering groceries online. This has to do with its value and price. Groceries belong to the categories of essential commodities product. Groceries are normally found in store or it can be described as a retail store that sells mostly food and other essential food items. These are mostly found in a cities ranging from large grocery stores, medium grocery stores to small groceries. The only thing that is common to them is the food stock products that they provide with other product other than food, such as clothing or household items. In most cases they are called supermarkets. They mostly comprise of several stock items. Their target is to provide the most essential product that are needed by people on day-to-day activities. Some of this store also includes a pharmacy and an electronics section. Other grocery stores, especially the large ones, are centerpieces of a larger complex that includes other facilities, such as gas stations, which will often operate under the store’s name. This setup is especially common in the United Kingdom, with major chains such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s having many locations operating under this format. The impact of intercultural competence on reliability on service quality and customer satisfaction in grocery retail industry in Malaysia has been discussed in Ihtiyar et al. [1]. This has to do with dissatisfaction on face-to-face groceries retails. There are many issues involves. Mobile device provide an opportunity of transaction between customers and the producers. Introducing grocery shopping system on mobile platform would make the market flexible and enhance the mobile services. A preliminary interview performed in this study suggests that local Malaysian citizens like groceries shopping and it was found that 69 percent of the locals go shopping for groceries at least once a week. While the remaining 29 percent prefer to go shopping at the markets close to their homes and very few prefer to go shopping at malls for a more variety of goods. When it comes to groceries business, both the customers and the business owners are cautious of their transactions, the fact still remains considering the prices and varieties. On the other hand, intervention promoted intentions and actual purchasing of sustainable groceries [2]. In order to ensure the sustainability of mobile groceries business, a lot of business standard has to be in place, because grocery business competition arises naturally due to high travel costs and the perishable nature of groceries appears to impart horizontal differentiation between firms [3]. Considering the issues and challenges of groceries business, this research is aimed to tackle the groceries purchasing process. This research introduces a mobile grocery shopping system targeting Malaysians within metropolitan Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia in order to provide easier means of buying and selling of groceries by Malaysians. The systems will run on mobile platform in order to enhance the flexibility of the business. Among some previous system is the one propose by Joo et al. [4] which is agent based system. The agents gather grocery information from several store server agents and compare it with user’s preferences of groceries and stores.
Recently many studies were developed various applications on Mobile, i.e: [14] and [15]. This paper presents mobile e-groceries transaction system. In the initial stages of the project development, we have identified several requirements for the system. The requirements were categorized into two, requirements for the administrator and the requirements for the client. The system is designed and tested. There is flow from the administrator’s ends to the client ends. The system works well and could be implemented on groceries transaction within metropolitan Kuala Lumpur. In the process of completing this development, there were many issues and difficulties that faced. Time constraints are the major issues. The next is the establishment of client and server system configuration. However, with all this issues the development still went as scheduled.