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The present study intends to discover and analyze the determinants of users' intention to use (ITU) drone-based online food delivery (OFD) services. The study mainly focuses on the drone-based food delivery system in India and its implications.

This study has used the purposive sampling method. With the support of the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB), a theoretical model was developed conceptually. Later, the model was validated using the partial least square-structure equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique with consideration of 324 responses mainly from university students in Delhi- National Capital Region (NCR).

The findings reveal that all the determinants are positively and significantly related to ITU, except for perceived behavioral control that does not influence the consumer’s ITU drone-based OFD services. The study also shows that how food delivery system through drone can revolutionize the entire food delivery system in India.

The present study has developed a unique model that can be used by practitioners, future researchers in this field and policymakers in government departments. The present study is limited to Delhi-NCR in India, and thus, there is an issue of generalizability in the present study.

This study has examined the future of food delivery system through drone-based system. Thus, the leaders in the food industry will be better positioned to understand consumers' intentions to use OFD services using drones and be able to make more informed decisions about investment in drone technology in their respective organizations.

The present study has combined both the technology adoption model and the TPB and developed a theoretical model. The study enriches the literature on drone-based OFD services. Since users' acceptance of OFD services using drones is an under-researched area, the present study will make a meaningful contribution to bring the body of literature in this domain.

In the wake of lockdown regulations and limited mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic, dining habits shifted towards usage of food delivery apps to avoid physical interaction. Nonetheless, it is unknown whether the COVID-19 pandemic had an influence on the adoption of food delivery apps. Therefore, this study examined factors influencing the adoption of food delivery apps during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the moderating effects of education and age.

Data were collected from 282 food delivery application users in South Africa using a web-based survey. Partial least square structural equation modelling analysis was used to test the hypotheses, while partial least squares multigroup analysis was used to examine the moderating effect of education level and age.

The results indicated that perceived ease of use has a significant impact on perceived usefulness and attitudes, perceived usefulness has an impact on attitudes and continuous intention, attitude influences continuous intention and social pressure and convenience influence attitudes. The perceived COVID-19 threat had no impact on attitudes, and education and age had no significant impact on any relationships. The findings are imperative for restaurants and mobile application designers, as they enable more effective strategic management planning.

This study is the first paper to empirically employ technology acceptance model to analyse the adoption of food delivery applications during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its uniqueness is in examining situational influence associated with the pandemic such as social pressure, perceived COVID-19 threat and convenience.

This article investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the consumer preference for the attributes of online food delivery (OFD) services in India. It also shows how the order size influences the consumer's willingness to pay (WTP) for the attributes of OFD services.

This work incorporates a conjoint analysis-based approach to determine the consumer preference for the attributes of OFDs such as price, delivery time, restaurant rating and packing quality during the COVID-19 pandemic. The fractional factorial design is applied for the data collection. The relative importance of the attributes and the part-worth utility of the attributes' levels have been determined. Further, the utility associated with the attributes' levels is used to find the consumer's WTP for different attributes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed consumer preference from price to food and packing quality in India. When the order is small, consumers exhibit a higher preference to the delivery time than packing quality. In contrast, consumers show a higher preference to packing quality than delivery time with the increase in order size. The consumer's WTP attains the highest level in case of food quality, followed by convenience and packing quality. The WTP for the attributes rises with the increase in order size.

The insights highlight the need for the online food delivery industry to redesign the business framework in the post-pandemic era. The hygiene and safety measures maintained by the consumers during the pandemic have significantly changed their purchasing behaviour, raising their preference for service quality (food and packing quality) of the OFD services apart from price.

This work determines the consumers' utility for each attribute level of OFDs, along with their relative importance. Moreover, this study contributes to the existing literature by exhibiting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the consumer preference and order size on consumer's WTP for the attributes.

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.

Guided by the theory of planned behavior and the technology acceptance model, the purpose of this study was to comprehensively examine the factors that affect consumers' intentions to continue to use food delivery apps by developing and testing a research model and examining the differences between consumers with different demographic characteristics or behavior changes during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

An online survey instrument was developed, and 316 valid responses were collected. A measurement model was developed and tested by using the structural equation modeling partial least squares (SEM-PLS) method.

The four basic constructs in the theory of planned behavior model (attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and trust) positively predicted consumers' intentions to continue to use food delivery apps. Predictors (including perceived innovativeness, hedonic and utilitarian motivations, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and food safety risk perception) of these four basic constructs were also identified and confirmed. Multigroup analyses were conducted, and differences were found between male and female consumers and those with different ordering frequencies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study expanded the application of the theory of planned behavior by examining consumers' intentions to continue using food delivery apps and improved the authors’ understanding of this theory. Further, the successful application of the technology acceptance model improved the authors’ understanding of consumers' attitudes and behavioral intentions related to food delivery app usage.

Off-premise restaurant service has a new addition – food delivery robots. This new technology and off-premise service, in general, has received little research attention, despite continued year-over-year sales growth for both carry-out and delivery. Therefore, this study aims to analyze off-premise service modes, including food delivery robots, for service quality gaps between consumer expectations and actual performance and among the various modes.

Performance of three off-premise restaurant service modes (robot-delivery, human-delivery and carry-out) were evaluated using a mixed-methods approach. Consumer expectations were ascertained about food- and service-related performance factors using a survey, and a field observation study was conducted to obtain actual performance data for these factors. Findings from both approaches were compared to identify gaps and differences.

For food-related performance, consumers reported lower expectations for food safety and food quality from robot- and human-delivered food; however, no differences were observed among the three modes in the field study. Consumers also expected lower service-related performance from robot-delivery for service efficiency and ease of use (than human-delivery and carry-out) and monetary value (than carry-out). Consumers deemed robots the most sustainable and human-delivery the most convenient compared to other modes – however, not all service-related expectations aligned with actual performances.

This study was the first to comparatively examine off-premise restaurant service. Identification of a missing link in service gap analysis was among the theoretical contributions of this study. Managerially, this study provides previously unavailable insights into opportunities for improvement for off-premise service and use of delivery robots.

This study aims to understand consumer behavior related to the purchase of meals by delivery services before and during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Brazil.

An online survey was conducted between September and October 2020. The total number of valid responses was 971.

About 55% of the participants reported a decrease in consumption or not having consumed food delivery during the pandemic. Of the total, 48.3% feared contracting COVID-19 from food delivery. A significant association was observed between fear of contracting COVID-19 from food delivery and variables such as education level (p = 0.001), observance of social distancing (p = 0.03) and food delivery consumption frequency (p < 0.001). More people were careful about cleaning food packaging (from 12.4% before to 66.1% during the pandemic, p < 0.001) and disposal (from 47.6% before to 66.4% during the pandemic, p < 0.001) and heating the food before consumption (from 7.6% before to 13.7% during the pandemic, p < 0.001) and used payment methods without approximation (from 29.8% before to 43.2% during the pandemic, p < 0.001) compared with the pre-pandemic period. More people also reported that application of security protocols during delivery (from 29.8% before to 43.2% during the pandemic, p < 0.001) and in restaurants (from 7.2% before to 25% during the pandemic, p < 0.001) and possessing knowledge about the financial difficulty of the establishment (from 4.6% before to 17% during the pandemic, p < 0.001) were the most important factors for choosing a food service.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore consumers’ fear of contracting COVID-19 from food delivery and consumer behavior related to food delivery services during the pandemic in Brazil – that is, way to order and payment methods, as well as concern and care related to the purchase of these foods.

The core idea of this paper was to empirically evaluate the factors affecting the choices of consumers while ordering food online. The goal was to explore consumer behavior in the emerging industry of online food delivery business in an emerging economy, Bangladesh.

This paper used a qualitative and exploratory approach through the collection and analysis of data from a total of 177 survey respondents. Statistical analyses of all collected data (utilizing t-tests and factor analysis) were used to conclude the factors important to consumers in ordering food online through online food delivery intermediaries.

Results showed delivery time, service quality, price and condition of food delivered as factors constitute the first factor considered to be directly affecting the success of online food delivery. Variety and number of restaurants, menu, delivery tracking service and attitude of a delivery person are found to constitute the second factor and considered as indirect factors.

Online food ordering has been a very emerging sector globally and also a recent phenomenon in Bangladesh. The development and the availability of the internet combined with the busy life schedule has prompted businesses to address another need among consumers, the need to deliver foods at consumers' doorsteps. Understanding the consumer landscape better would help realize the full potential of the e-commerce platform as it can influence the economy, businesses and the quality of life of people.

The online food delivery business is new and growing and demands greater researches for better understanding by academicians and practitioners. This paper expands the limited existing research related to the online food delivery business and explores consumer behavior in the industry. From a managerial perspective, the paper contributes to understanding the consumers more broadly.

The study aims to analyze guest comments on the Uber Eats food delivery app (FDA) in the USA during the April–June 2020 COVID-19 pandemic lockdown period. Three aspects influencing customer satisfaction with the FDA were evaluated in this study: (1) performance on the app, (2) product quality and (3) service quality.

One thousand customer comments posted on the Uber Eats Google Play app from April 1 to June 30, 2020 were analyzed in this study. The text mining technique was applied to discover the hidden, but meaningful patterns from the unstructured text. Content analysis was applied to systematically analyze the text into organized categories and themes.

Among the three dimensions evaluated in this study, the most important dimension regarding customers' perceptions toward the FDA was the service quality dimension (40.02%), followed by the FDA's performance dimension (39.43%) and the product quality dimension (20.54%) was least important. Additionally, customers' perceptions towards the three dimensions were all unfavorable and there were more negative comments than the positive comments: FDAs (P/N = 0.728), product quality (P/N = 0.60) and service quality (P/N = 0.865).

Previous studies investigating FDAs assessed solely the performance of the app. However, customers' experience of a food delivery service is comprised of multiple components including the app, the restaurant and the delivery driver. To fill the void, this study evaluated a third-party app performance, product quality and service quality to capture the totality of customers' food delivery service experience.

This study investigates the motivation among customers to be more loyal to online food delivery applications (OFDA) services even after the COVID-19 epidemic by using perceived service quality aspects in Sri Lanka. The data were gathered by physically distributing a self-administrated questionnaire to clients in Sri Lanka who continue to use OFDA services on platform to customer (P2C) service delivery platforms to buy food despite the COVID-19 outbreak. Multiple regression is employed to analyse 287 effective observations, and the data revealed the significant positive effect of interaction, environment, outcome, and food qualities on customer loyalty to OFDA services. In fact, there is no impact from the delivery quality on customer loyalty to OFDA services due to outsourced food delivery. The findings suggest regular improvements in attributes such as interaction, environment, outcome, and food qualities in this hyper-competitive business environment. Further, this study sets substantial facts for the interested parties to establish an exemplary delivery system and other technological advancements to have a sustainable competitive advantage and solid customer base in the long run.