Exploring Grocery Shopping across Digital Channels: A Systematic Review of Online Channels, Omni-Channels, Virtual Reality, and Metaverse

The digital transformation of grocery retail is reshaping consumer behavior and operational strategies through online platforms, immersive technologies, and virtual marketplaces. This study critically reviews academic literature on grocery shopping across digitalized channels to identify key themes, research trends, and knowledge gaps. 166 Web of Science–indexed publications were analyzed. In response to recent calls, the study adopts a multi-method approach combining (1) bibliometric analysis, and (2) qualitative thematic analysis. This study is among the first systematic literature review studies in digitalized grocery shopping areas to integrate the scientific procedures and rationales for systematic literature reviews (SPAR-4-SLR) protocol with the antecedents-decisions-outcomes– theory-context-method (ADO-TCM) framework. Findings are structured using the ADO-TCM framework, around antecedents, decisions, outcomes, and associated theories, contexts, and methods. The review identifies 10 major themes and 29 subthemes across four domains: online, omnichannel, virtual/AR-based, and Metaverse-based grocery shopping. The study provides a comprehensive synthesis of the field and highlights the need for more interdisciplinary, theory-driven, and methodologically plural research, while proposing 10 future research directions.