Grocery shopping in metaverse: understanding drivers and barriers Mehrgan Malekpour and Oswin Maurer Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy Vincenzo Basile Universita degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Napoli, Italy, and Gabriele Baima Department of Management, Universita degli Studi di Torino, Torino, Italy Abstract Purpose – This study aims to enhance our understanding of customer expectations and experiences in grocery shopping within the metaverse. It investigates factors influencing customer satisfaction and driving continued engagement with metaverse platforms, offering insights into the drivers of customer adoption and barriers to usage. Design/methodology/approach – Adopting a qualitative netnographic approach, this study analysed customer reactions to Walmart’s virtual store demonstration. Data were collected from user comments on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and Reddit. Thematic analysis was employed to identify key factors contributing to satisfaction and dissatisfaction with metaverse grocery shopping experiences. Findings – The study reveals three major drivers shaping customer satisfaction and subsequent positive intentions toward grocery shopping in the metaverse: social, functional and hedonic stimuli. Eight critical barriers affecting the metaverse shopping experience are identified: functional, hedonic, social, financial, privacy, safety, ownership and store atmospherics concerns, including tactile, acoustic and visual elements. Research limitations/implications – The findings are derived from a qualitative analysis of customer comments on social media platforms, which may limit generalisability. Future studies could adopt a mixed- methods approach to validate these findings across broader datasets. Originality/value – This work is the first research to examine customer satisfaction with grocery shopping in the metaverse. It offers valuable insights into customer expectations, adoption drivers and critical barriers, laying the groundwork for further exploration of metaverse applications in retail. Keywords Grocery shopping, Metaverse, Customer satisfaction, Social interaction, Retailing Paper type Research paper 1. Introduction The retail industry is experiencing significant transformations driven by disruptive factors, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and emerging virtual platforms. Among these, the metaverse projected to reach a market value of $1.5 trillion by 2030 (Boo and Suh, 2024). This virtual environment is used across diverse sectors like tourism, marketing and retailing (Gursoy et al., 2022; Dwivedi et al., 2023; Kim et al., 2023). The metaverse enables customers to purchase physical and digital goods with home delivery or in-store pickup options (Hadi et al., 2023). Despite claims that the metaverse could surpass traditional e-commerce (Papagiannidis et al., 2008), the grocery sector remains largely unexplored. Addressing this gap is significant for three reasons. First, grocery shopping is a fundamental and frequent activity for most households, with consumers making regular purchases to meet daily needs (Hansson et al., 2022). Second, food spending represents a significant share of household expenditure (Basile, 2019; Eurostat, 2023). Third, while online grocery shopping offers convenience, consumers still value sensory experiences typically found in physical stores. Given these factors, exploring grocery shopping in the metaverse is not only relevant but necessary to understand how this emerging platform can address key consumer needs and reshape the grocery retail EuroMed Journal of Business Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper. The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/1450-2194.htm Received 19 December 2024 Revised 24 January 2025 Accepted 29 January 2025 EuroMed Journal of Business © Emerald Publishing Limited e-ISSN: 1758-888X p-ISSN: 1450-2194 DOI 10.1108/EMJB-12-2024-0351