Enhancing Public Sector Service Efficiency by Electronic Commerce

In December 2000, the city of Turku, Finland, outsourced its open care grocery shopping to an online grocery retailer. The city officials expected that an outside e-commerce player would among other things bring time savings so that the open care service would be able to focus on caring for the elderly and the disabled at home. This paper examines the expected and realised effect of electronic commerce on the efficiency of the grocery shopping service from the viewpoint of the three main stakeholders: the customers, the employees and the management. The findings are based on employee and customer surveys as well as interviews with the open care management. The research combines both quantitative and qualitative methods.