Ninth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Due to the ubiquitous internet and popularity of mobile devices, the online-to-offline (O2O) food delivery is booming in recent years. O2O food delivery allows diners to order online and receive food delivered to their home or workplace. Besides using a restaurant website, diners can also order food from third-party platforms (e.g., UberEats, GrubHub, Meituan, Ele.me) that provide a wide variety of food options. In 2018, the number of O2O food delivery users is estimated to be one billion with an annual growth rate of 13.9%. China is the largest market for O2O food delivery, followed by the US and India (Statista, 2018). The rapid growth of O2O food delivery has received increasing attention from researchers. The current literature focuses on the operations of delivery platforms or apps, and the impacts of O2O technology on consumers (Correa et al., 2018; He et al., 2018). Although the O2O literature is growing, very limited studies examine the diner’s decision-making process of using the O2O food delivery service (Kapoor & Vij, 2018; Cho, Bonn, & Li, 2018). Therefore, this study seeks to fill in the gap by investigating factors influencing the diner’s intention to use the O2O food delivery service. Using survey data collected in China, this study will investigate the impacts of diner’s motivation and the platform service attributes (e.g., app design, delivery efficiency, price, etc.) on the intention to order food through apps. This study will provide insights into understanding the diner’s decision-making process and improving O2O food delivery service in China.