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Food ordering apps have registered phenomenal growth during the pandemic and will continue to register high growth in the years to come. This paper has three objectives: first, to differentiate between the sales funnel of traditional vs platform businesses; second, to understand the sales funnel optimization strategies of a leading food ordering app in India; and third, to draw lessons from these strategies to enable food ordering apps in particular, and platform businesses in general to achieve the goals of customer acquisition and retention in a highly competitive market.

The study is based on interviews conducted with company officials of two leading food delivery platforms in India, and a rich qualitative analysis of secondary data sources including news reports, government policies, reports and statistics from global consultancy firms. The interviews were analyzed to understand various stages of the sales funnel for the food ordering apps and the strategies implemented by the companies based on their understanding of the customer journey.

The findings of the study reveal that the sales funnel of a food ordering platform can be divided into three stages – top of the funnel (ToFu), middle of the funnel (MoFu) and bottom of the funnel. In the ToFu stage, the goal of the food ordering app is to create awareness about their brand and induce app download, which results in customer acquisition. In the MoFu stage, the food ordering app initiates personalized promotion strategies to trigger maximum orders via the app. The customer is then targeted for retention and referrals. Customer app navigation and order data are the most crucial inputs for navigating the sales funnel effectively.

First, app-based service firms, especially food ordering platforms, can understand how the digital sales funnel can be optimized to generate an appropriate customer mix. Second, they need to understand various interventions at different stages of the sales funnel to move the customer from the app download to loyalty. Third, the food ordering platforms and app-based service firms need to understand how to use customer data to design customer relationship management strategies that can convert retention into referral strategies to expand the funnel.

Incumbents in the intensely competitive food ordering industry need to understand the process of customer acquisition and retention. An understanding of the digital sales funnel can enable them to achieve the right mix of customers in their fold. Other companies that offer app-based services can also understand various stages of the digital sales funnel, and how customers can be moved from one stage to the next one by planning appropriate interventions using app data.

The research contributes by offering clear insights on how food delivery platforms in India acquire and retain customers through an understanding of the digital sales funnel. The paper also offers insights on the interventions that are adopted by such firms to move customers from one stage of the sales funnel to the next one. The paper clearly brings out the value of the 3Rs for a food ordering platform – revenue, retention and referral.

This paper aims to explore the governance of external entities that lie outside the boundaries of digital platform firms by using the theoretical lens of the transaction cost theory (TCT). TCT offers alternative modes of governance for effectively managing transactions in market, hierarchy or hybrid scenarios providing a perfect framework to study platform governance.

The paper explores governance issues between restaurant partners and online food delivery platforms in India via qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews of various stakeholders, including restaurant partners and platform managers.

The study reveals that information asymmetry, opportunism, control and trust deficit are the major strategic governance issues in online food delivery platforms.

Though care had been taken to cover all types of restaurants, due to lockdown number of restaurants studied was restricted in number. Despite the restrictions, findings provided valuable insights into the governance issues of the digital platform. Challenging times like Covid-19 make the study even more crucial from the strategic perspective. The study also adds to the literature on platform governance and provides practical implications for account managers and policymakers.

The study uncovers various critical governance issues. These, if resolved using the right combination of governance mechanisms, will lead to increased partner participation and value creation on the platform.

Platforms outsource the value creation to external entities without having any hierarchical control over partners. The paper studies governance outside the boundaries of the firm using TCT. Hence, it helps to extend governance outside the boundaries of the firm.

A growing body of research finds that gig economy platforms use gamification to enhance managerial control. Focusing on technologically mediated forms of gamification, this literature reveals how platforms mobilize gig workers’ work effort by making the labour process resemble a game. This chapter contends that this tech-centric scholarship fails to fully capture the historical continuities between contemporary and much older occurrences of game-playing at work. Informed by interviews and participatory observations at two food delivery platforms in Amsterdam, I document how these platforms’ piece wage system gives rise to a workplace dynamic in which severely underpaid delivery couriers continuously employ game strategies to maximize their gig income. Reminiscent of observations from the early shop floor ethnographies of the manufacturing industry, I show that the game of gig income maximization operates as an indirect modality of control by (re)aligning the interests of couriers with the interests of capital and by individualizing and depoliticizing couriers’ overall low wage level. I argue that the new, algorithmic technologies expand and intensify the much older forms of gamified control by infusing the organizational activities of shift and task allocation with the logic of the piece wage game and by increasing the possibilities for interaction, direct feedback and immersion. My study contributes to the literature on gamification in the gig economy by interweaving it with the classic observations derived from the manufacturing industry and by developing a conceptualization of gamification in which both capital and labour exercise agency.

The learning outcomes are as follows: to understand and examine the strategies that help platforms fight competition and manage networks; to analyse the role of platform governance in the management of the networks and partners’ trust; and to evaluate the strategic risks of disintermediation and multi-homing firms face while trying to sustain profits and capture value.

The case presents the dilemma faced by Deepinder Goyal, the young founder and CEO of Zomato in formulating the growth strategy for its food delivery platform, struggling to retain its market leadership position amid intensifying competition and other challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Zomato has become a public company with an IPO announced in mid of July 2021. Therefore, there is growing expectation for profitability among its shareholders and investors considering tailwinds of COVID-19 crisis, which have given the push towards adoption of food delivery among the customers. This has also resulted in increased competition in the industry. On other hand, there is growing dissatisfaction among its restaurant partners who have been hit hard by COVID-19 and struggling for survival. CEO Deepinder has to find how he will ensure the long-term growth for Zomato to tap the growing food delivery market in India and regain its restaurant partner’s trust.

The case is intended for post-graduate courses (MBA, PGDM) on digital business strategy or strategic management of technology-oriented businesses. The case can be used to understand the nature of competition and different strategies for platform-based businesses in the digital world. The case can also be used to study the role governance can play in efficient value creation and capture on the platform by the partner entities. Finally, the case also highlights how are platform businesses are coping with the Covid challenge. There are no specific prerequisites but knowledge on basic strategy concepts and platform business concepts will be good for better understanding. Level of difficulty is medium.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

The learning outcomes of this case study are as follows: It presents an opportunity for the instructors to introduce the concept of decision-making on matters involving risk (like scaling the business) using in-depth market research techniques. The case’s central idea is to make the students understand the growth of the online service delivery model, with a specific example of home-cooked food that also improves social welfare. It is expected to provide the participants with an opportunity to understand the decision-making by the leaders in newly established companies. It enables future managers to analyze a venture’s pros and cons before deciding to expand.

Chef Junction is an online food delivery platform that allows customers to order hygienic home-cooked food prepared by handpicked home chefs in Bhubaneswar. This city in eastern India is one of the fastest-growing metros, is regarded as a study hub, and provides ample employment opportunities making it one of the sought-after destinations for the migrant youth population. The idea behind Chef Junction is to cater to the healthy food needs of the young by utilizing the culinary productivity of the home cooks, empowering the latter by opening up an extra source of income. These chefs prepare delicious healthy food, usually not listed for sale with online food delivery apps. Chef Junction earned revenues by adding an order-dependent commission on the price quoted by chefs and accepting a flat delivery charge from the customers. This offer was very lucrative for home chefs who could join the platform with zero investment and flexible working hours. The customer’s pockets were also handled when several offers and discounts were rolled out through an attractive pricing strategy. Chef Junction expected to improve its patrons’ health quotient by ensuring the nutrition of the home-cooked food, thus contributing to social welfare. With food being delivered from home to home amalgamated with social welfare and empowerment of home chefs, especially women, this case study is an apt example of a sustainable work-from-home model that has proved effective in crisis times. The pertinent question is: “How feasibly can CJ’s business model grow towards an expansion as the demand increases?”

This case study has been prepared keeping in mind the teaching pedagogy for graduate and postgraduate management programs in strategic management, operations research, entrepreneurship and marketing management. It is also expected to be useful for training courses such as management development programs, faculty development programs and executive programs, in discussing service operations in general and online delivery logistics, in particular for working executives and industry practitioners.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this research is to gain a better understanding of how a crowd-shipping platform can achieve a critical mass of senders and carrier crowd members to yield network effects that are necessary for the platform to grow and thrive. Specifically, this research studies the participation decisions of both senders and carriers over time and the impacts of the resulting feedback loop on platform growth and performance.

An agent-based model is developed and used to study dynamic behavior and network effects within a simulated crowd-shipping platform. The model allows both carriers and senders to be represented as autonomous, heterogeneous and adaptive agents, whose decisions to participate in the platform impact the participation of other agents over time. Survey data inform the logic governing agent decisions and behaviors.

The feedback loop created by individual sender and carrier agents' participation decisions generates complex and dynamic network effects that are observable at the platform level. Experimental results demonstrate the importance of having sufficient crowd carriers available when the platform is initially launched, as well as ensuring that sender and carrier participation remains balanced as the platform grows over time.

The model successfully demonstrates the power of agent-based modeling (ABM) in analyzing network effects in crowd-shipping systems. However, the model has not yet been fully validated with data from a real-world crowd-shipping platform. Furthermore, the model's geographic scope is limited to a single census tract. Platform behavior will likely differ across geographic regions, with varying demographics and sender/carrier density.

The modeling approach can be used to provide the manager of a volunteer-based crowd-shipping program for food rescue with insights on how to achieve a critical mass of participants, with an appropriate balance between the number of restaurant food donation delivery requests and the number of crowd-shippers available and willing to make those deliveries.

This research can help a crowd-shipping platform for urban food rescue to grow and become self-sustainable, thereby serving more food-insecure people.

The model represents both senders and the carrier crowd as autonomous, heterogeneous and adaptive agents, such that network effects resulting from their interactions can emerge and be observed over time. The model was designed to study a volunteer crowd-shipping platform for food rescue, with participant motivations driven by personal values and social factors, rather than monetary incentives.

The purpose of this study is to investigate e-commerce as a new means to ensure that the urban demand for food can be met during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. Because a number of COVID-19 e-commerce models have emerged, this paper discusses whether and (if so) why and how e-commerce can ensure the food supply for urban residents if social distancing becomes a norm and the transport and logistics systems are hindered.

This study used qualitative research methods following the lack of empirical data. The authors referred to relevant literature, statistical data and official reports and comprehensively described the importance of e-commerce in ensuring the safety of food supply to Chinese urban residents under the impact of the epidemic. Corresponding to the traditional case study, this study presented a Chinese case on ensuring food supply through e-commerce during an epidemic.

The authors found that three e-commerce models played a substantial role in preventing the spread of the epidemic and ensuring the food supply for urban residents. The nationwide e-commerce platforms under market leadership played their roles by relying on the sound infrastructure of large cities and its logistics system was vulnerable to the epidemic. In the worst-affected areas, particularly in closed and isolated communities, the local e-commerce model was the primary model, supplemented by the unofficial e-commerce model based on social relations. Through online booking, centralized procurement and community distribution, the risk of cross infection could be effectively reduced and the food demand could be effectively satisfied. The theoretical explanation further verifies that, apart from e-commerce, a governance system that integrates the government, e-commerce platform, community streets and the unofficial guanxi also impels the success of these models.

Lessons from China are drawn for other countries struggling to deliver food to those in need under COVID-19. The study not only provides a solution that will ensure constant food supply to urban residents under the COVID-19 epidemic but also provides some reference for the maintenance of the food system of urban residents under the impact of a globalization-related crisis in future.