Designing Digital Services for Grocery Shopping

Abstract

This Bachelor’s thesis introduces the concept of service design and some of the basic tools service design has. Service design is defined as improving an existing service or developing a new one with the methods of design. Human-centric approach is in important part in service design and many times the designing processes include co-operation with service customers and other parties included in the service process. The aim in service design practices is to get the service match with the customers’ wishes and make the service process easy and effective for all stakeholders in the service process.

In this thesis, the use of service design is considered in the development of digitized grocery shopping services. The aim of introducing this case example is to demonstrate the advantages service design can bring to the service development process and to the outcome. The results are considered from both customer’s and service provider’s angles. Also, the possible challenges in digitalization of grocery shopping are discussed.

In Finland groceries are still mainly done traditionally in store and the annual growth of online grocery shopping is still relatively slow. The online market still has a lot of potential to grow and many grocery shops are now thinking how to reach this potential. By using service design in developing more user-friendly and attractive service options for online grocery shopping is considered as a way for reaching this potential.