From TikTok Trends to Grocery Shelves : How Managers in Swedish Grocery Retail Respond to Viral Food Products

Sammanfattning

This study examines how managers in the Swedish grocery retail industry identify, interpret, and evaluate viral food products that emerge on TikTok. As the platform increasingly shapes consumer demand, grocery retailers face growing pressure to respond quickly to new trends. Despite this, prior research has primarily focused on the consumer perspective, thereby leaving the managerial perspective relatively unexplored. To address this gap, the study adopts a qualitative research design based on thirteen semi-structured interviews with managers across different functions in Swedish grocery retail, including two external informants. The theoretical framework incorporates concepts from managerial attention, signaling theory, sensemaking, and evaluation to understand how managers engage with viral food products in practice. The findings show that the identification of viral food products is shaped by inputs from employees, customers, and competitors rather than structured monitoring of TikTok. Although these food trends are highly visible, they remain difficult to interpret as the observed popularity does not clearly indicate underlying demand or duration. As a result, managers rely on prior experience and intuition to interpret and make sense of these signals. The evaluation of market relevance is determined by contextual factors such as customer fit, local conditions, and ethical considerations, while also involving a trade-off between speed and risk. Finally, the findings show that managers often develop their understanding of viral food products by acting on them, suggesting a revised process model where identification, interpretation, evaluation, and action become interdependent activities under conditions of high uncertainty.