Book excerpt: This book attempts to shed light on why it is so difficult to develop and maintain successful businesses in the grocery e-commerce arena. Within the last five years, grocery e-commerce has experienced both consistent successes such as Tesco.com and irrevocable failures such as Webvan.com. Niels Kornum and Mogens Bjerre bring key researchers together to investigate the factors contributing to the success of grocery e-commerce, particularly in countries that had the earliest and most extensive experiences in this field: the USA, the UK and Scandinavia.