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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.

This study aims to assess green food packages’ role in sustaining a restaurant’s curbside pickup service on three stages of consumer experiences: choosing a restaurant, evaluating their experiences of a recent purchase and weighing their post-consumption behavioral intentions after the recent purchase.

The service encounters framework and relevant literature guided the development of the questionnaire. A Qualtrics panel data of 314 valid questionnaires were collected and analyzed with choice experience, ordinary least squares regression and PROCESS modeling.

First, word-of-mouth (WOM) and function encounters significantly influence consumers’ first-time curbside pickup purchasing decisions. Then, service results encounter (besides distributor encounter) most significantly affects consumers’ overall curbside pickup experience. Finally, green food packages increase consumers’ shares of future purchases through their positive WOM intentions and extra efforts of revisiting the restaurant. Consumers’ perceived importance of green restaurant practices strengthens green food packages’ positive impact on extra efforts.

This study provides operational and marketing insights for restaurants to use food packages and sustain their curbside pickup service.

Besides assessing consumers’ evaluations and behavioral intentions for an off-premises restaurant service expected to stay beyond the pandemic, this research uniquely focuses on green food packages, a sustainability issue lacking research attention. The findings add new empirical insights to studies about sustainability and restaurant/food–retail operations.

Modernization and the rise of living standards have introduced new variants of traditional foods, from their tastes to the way they are enjoyed. This study aims to explore and examine the impacts of both traditional and modern marketing stimuli on restaurant choice intention for experiencing culinary traditions, hence answering the question of how traditional and modern aspects live together to bring about the most desirable experience for customers of traditional cuisine.

Based on the stimuli-organism-response (S-O-R) theory and mixed research methods, a model linking service quality dimensions, perceived value and restaurant choice intention is formulated and tested on quantitative data from 431 customers of Gen Y and Gen Z, given the case of Vietnamese Pho.

The findings show that food quality demonstrates the strongest impact on restaurant choice intention, followed by authenticity and nostalgia marketing. These relationships are partially mediated by perceived value. Hygiene risks and perceived value are also found to directly affect restaurant choice intention. Nevertheless, our findings are quite different between Gen Y and Gen Z customers.

This research provides crucial strategic implications for restaurant managers when it comes to serving traditional foods for different generations.

This study responds to the existing gap by examining and comparing the impacts of traditional and modern marketing stimuli on restaurant choice intention through the mediating role of perceived value. Our study also actively contributes to the ongoing multigenerational research stream by affirming the moderation role of generations (Gen Y and Gen Z) in those relationships.

This study proposes a model that influences customer citizenship behavior during COVID-19, and empirically tests the effects of fast-food restaurant customers' perceptions of justice (price and procedural justice) on trust; trust on satisfaction and loyalty; and trust, satisfaction and loyalty on customer citizenship behavior. Furthermore, it was questioned whether there was a disparity between customer expectations based on the restaurant's image and consumption experience.

The data were gathered from customers of fast-food restaurants in the shopping centers in Turkey. The data set, which included 437 valid questionnaires, was subjected to CFA for validity and reliability, SEM analysis for hypothesis and paired sample t-Tests for the research questions.

The findings of the study indicate that perceived justice affects customer trust, which, consequently, affects customer loyalty and satisfaction during the COVID-19 period. Findings also demonstrate that, while customer loyalty and trust increase customer citizenship behavior, customer satisfaction alone is insufficient to increase customer citizenship behavior. The study also shows that during the COVID-19 period, fast-food restaurants should have raised awareness of employees’ fair behaviors toward the customers and provided additional services to differentiate themselves in the market. Also, it indicates that customer expectations related to price, cleanliness and professional appearance of staff are not met after taking service.

No research has been found in the literature focusing on the expectations, justice, trust, satisfaction, loyalty and citizenship behaviors of fast-food restaurant customers in the COVID-19 pandemic process. Therefore, the results can fill the gap in relevant literature by testing the relationships between justice, trust, satisfaction, loyalty and citizenship during the pandemic and provide inferences for fast-food business owners.

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors influencing consumers' intentions to use drone food delivery services from the perspective of the theory of consumption values (TCV).

Data collection involves the utilisation of self-administered questionnaires. Subsequently, 305 data were gathered from Malaysian consumers and subjected to analysis through partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

This study demonstrated that functional, social, emotional and epistemic values, as well as personal innovativeness, can strongly predict intentions. However, neither the conditional value nor environmental concerns were significant predictors of intentions.

The study is the first of its kind to use the TCV from the perspective of a developing country to understand consumers' intentions to use drone food delivery services.

This research delineates the interdependencies between e-service quality (e-SQ), product quality (PQ) and food biosafety measures (FBM) in shaping consumer satisfaction and loyalty within the online food delivery services (OFDS) landscape. Anchored by the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the study integrates these frameworks to examine how perceived service efficiency, reliability, product appeal and biosafety protocols contribute to overall consumer trust and repurchase intentions.

Surveys were conducted on several 100 online food delivery app users, ages 20 to 64, in major cities in Colombia, which provided data for structural equation modeling analysis.

The analysis revealed that reliable, responsive service and appealing food presentation significantly influence consumer perceptions of behind-the-scenes safety protocols during delivery. Strict standards around mitigating contamination risks and verifiable handling at each point further engender trust in the platform and intentions to repurchase among users. The data cement proper food security as pivotal for customer retention.

Quantitatively confirming biosafety’s rising centrality provides an impetus for platforms to integrate and promote integrity, safety and traceability protection as a competitive differentiator.

The study’s originality lies in its comprehensive exploration of the OFDS quality attributes and their direct impact on consumer loyalty. Besides, it offers valuable insights for both academic and practical implications in enhancing service delivery and marketing strategies.

The purpose of this study is to discover what attributes of casino buffet restaurants are the most important for customers’ willingness to pay (WTP).

Choice-based conjoint analysis was used in this study to test seven attributes: food, price/value, real price, service, atmosphere, the number of reviews and user-generated star ratings. Sawtooth Software was used to do the conjoint analysis, and a series of significance t-tests were run to determine the significance of each attribute on WTP with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).

Based on a survey of 483 respondents who had visited a buffet at a casino within the last two years, this study found that food is ranked as the most significant attribute of a casino buffet restaurant, followed by real price and service quality.

Theoretically, this work is the first to the authors’ knowledge to apply the antecedents of behavioral intention to willingness-to-pay for niche restaurants. Practically, the results of this study will help casino buffet operators as they re-open after COVID-19. Future studies could collect data in the post-pandemic environment and examine WTP at casino buffets in different geographic locations.

Online food delivery has been prevalent in recent years worldwide, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and people's consumption behaviors have changed significantly. This study aims to investigate the consumption behavior of young adults using online food delivery platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic and focuses on the dominant factors influencing their decision to use online food delivery platforms.

Semi-structured interviews including 14 young adults aged 18–25 living in Hong Kong were conducted to collect data about their perspectives on online food delivery platforms in five areas. This research adopted the stimulus-organism-response model (S-O-R model) to analyze how the factors influence young adult users' loyalty and satisfaction with online food delivery platforms.

Thematic analyses revealed that young adults were attracted to online food delivery platforms for their numerous benefits. They had a high frequency of usage and significant spending. Usability, usefulness, satisfaction and loyalty influenced young adults' behaviors on online food delivery platforms. Participants were overall satisfied with their experiences, but platforms still had room for improvement.

Few prior studies investigated the factors affecting the consumer experience and behavioral intention of online food delivery for young adults in Asia. This study contributes to understanding young adults' experiences and problems with online food delivery platforms. It provides practical insights for system engineers and designers to improve the current services and for the governments to enhance the existing regulatory loopholes.

Digital platforms for the provision of food information-based services (FISs) represent a consolidated business with increasing revenue streams for entrepreneurs. Such platforms have transformed and clarified the nature of uncertainty and ambiguity inherent in the traditional food sector entrepreneurial processes. Anyway, a clear understanding of the value of digital platforms for FISs is not yet consolidated in the literature. With this paper, the authors try to fill this gap through a critical literature review of scientific research that combines knowledge on food consumer's behavior and user's knowledge behavior.

The authors carried out a critical literature review of scientific research combining knowledge of food consumer's and food information user's behavior. This allowed the identification of the main value components of FISs.

The authors propose a multidimensional framework for modelling the value proposition of digital platforms for FISs. Three main value dimensions have been identified: relevance, credibility, and accessibility. These dimensions concur with the consumer's perceived value of consumers in terms of benefits increase and cost reduction.

The research was intended to shed light on aspects characterizing consumers' perception of food information value. The authors put in evidence that the informational perspective of food communication is under-investigated. This study attempts to provide a holistic overview of the dimensions impacting on consumers' perception of the value of information for food consumers, opening new research perspectives.

The framework represents a tool for positioning food information offerings on the market, with the objective to analyze the value proposition of FISs according to a consumer perspective and to understand gaps of current offering of FISs. Moreover, it may support the design of a new generation of digital platform for food information provision, which would respond to consumers' expectations and information needs, highlighting emerging business opportunities for digital entrepreneurs.

Few research works provide a characterization of value proposition of digital platforms providing food information to consumers. In particular, to date, literature lacks of a holistic overview of the dimensions influencing consumer's perception of the information value of food communications.

Circumstances such as pandemics can cause individuals to fall into a state of need, so they turn to donation services for assistance. However, donation services can be designed based on supply-side considerations, e.g. efficiency or inventory control, which restrict consumer choice without necessarily considering how consumer vulnerabilities like low financial or interpersonal power might cause them to react to such restrictions. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine service designs that limit the choices consumers are given in terms of either the allowable quantity or assortment variety and examine effects on consumer perceptions of justice and satisfaction.

Three experiments are reported, including one manipulating the service design of an actual food pantry.

When consumers have low financial or interpersonal power, meaning their initial state of control is low, and they encounter a donation service that provides limited (vs. expanded) choice that drops control even lower, they perceive the situation as unjust and report lower satisfaction.

Donation service providers should strive to design services that allow for expanded consumer choice and use interpersonal processes that empower beneficiaries so they perceive the service experience as just and satisfying. Collecting feedback from beneficiaries is also recommended.

While researchers have started to look at the service experiences of vulnerable populations, they have focused primarily on financial service designs. The authors look at donation service designs and identify problems with supply-side limits to choice quantity and assortment.