Keywords

Online Food Delivery Services, COVID-19, Pandemic, Intention.

Introduction

Over the last decade, the consumers are shifted from “bricks” to “clicks” i.e. physical dimension to the digital era. Today’s digital economy is based on internet platforms, acts as a leading technological shift in pandemic times. Online platforms have become the major source and part most of businesses. Those platforms are useful to access and exchange information and flexible in time and space. Online food aggregators are entrenched in the everyday lives of millions of food buyers. The food delivery act as a soul for the restaurant sectors, making an influence on the surroundings, viable production, and social aid.

Online Food Delivery during COVID-19 Pandemic

In 2020, online food delivery is turned into a major protagonist in the food and beverage sector. During the global COVID-19 pandemic, online food delivery platforms play a crucial role in food consumers. Millions of people are stayed inside their homes, made them expect various choices of food and taste. The online presence of most branded restaurants in online food aggregators makes them offer for consumer’s choice. The online food delivery faced an unprecedented demand in the pandemic times which created a constrained open marketplace for the restaurants and cloud kitchens. The government started to initiate and made policies to maintain hygiene- sanitary control plans for restaurants and meal delivery platforms. So rather than dine-in restaurants, consumers have revolved into online food delivery as a benign substitute for their taste buds. Online food delivery helps people to limits the number of trips steps out from home. Earlier, the expectation and basic requirement from people expectation was timely delivery, online discounts and offers, and price saving orientation. Now the prioritizing turns to hygiene and social distancing norms. Based on these behavioral changes, the following study has been done to determine fear-based behavioral changes among consumers who will continue post-COVID also.

Theoretical Framework and Hypothesis Development

For the current situation, the online food delivery is the innovative technology that meets the needs of consumers during this pandemic times. Many studies have investigated the intention towards online food delivery services (Alalwan, 2020; Cho, Bonn, & Li, 2019; S. W. Lee, Sung, & Jeon, 2019; Ray, Dhir, Bala, & Kaur, 2019; Suhartanto, Helmi Ali, Tan, Sjahroeddin, & Kusdibyo, 2019; Yeo, Goh, & Rezaei, 2017) using the theories such as Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) given by, Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and more. Some of the researchers combined the theories and explored the behavior intention in online food delivery services (Kim & Hwang, 2020). This paper utilized the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), with the extended factors of Online Food Delivery (OFD) services such as Convenience, Various food choices, and variables related to present pandemic situation like Trust and Social Distancing. TPB was developed based on the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), which is a valuable outline for deceitful behavior change interpolations and to elucidate the tools by which involvements are predictable to utilize their effects on behavior (Steinmetz, Knappstein, & Schmidt, 2016). The TRA put forward that behavioral intentions are trained by subjective, attitudes or social norms that force the consumers to embrace particular behaviors (Bauer, Reichardt, Barnes, & Neumann, 2005). (Ajzen, 1991) added to the Theory of Reasoned Action model a third expounding element of user intentions and behavior, the variable of perceived control construct, thus evolving the TPB model. Accordingly, the Theory of planned behavior model founds that distinct attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived control explain the behavioral intention of the individual and, thus, it implies on an actual behavior of consumers.

The role of the conceptual model is to deliver a theoretical base to capture the re-intention in the perspective of online food delivery services in the post-COVID-19 times. It provides a broad scope by uniquely adding constructs that measure and retain the parsimony. The study developed a conceptual model by revisiting the existing behavior intention theories including the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991), and adding additional constructs includes trust and Social distancing as a construct. The theory of planned behavior was retained using two constructs such as Perceived Behavioural Control and Attitude towards online food delivery services. This theory is validated for the study of consumer behavior in various studies (Khoi, Tuu, & Olsen, 2018; Kim & Hwang, 2020; Lin, 2007).

Convenience (CON)

Consumers purchasing through online mode are motivated by the convenience provided without stepping out from their place (Jiang, 2014) during the pandemic time. Previous studies have proved consumers' convenience is determined by the energy and time effort to accomplish the task (Cheow, Yeo, Goh, & Rezaei, 2017; Daud, 2019; Roh & Park, 2019). Thus hypothesized as

H1: Convenience will positively influence attitude towards continuing online food delivery services in the post-COVID-19 times.

Trust (TR)

Food safety is the primary element in the pandemic time, particularly on online food delivery services. The trust in online food delivery services is measured as to how much an individual trusts the aggregators or organizations involved in food delivery (Benson, Lavelle, Spence, Elliott, & Dean, 2020). Hence hypothesized as

H2: Trust will positively influence attitude towards continuing online food delivery services.in the post-COVID-19 times.

Perceived Behavioral Control (PBC)

Perceived behavioral control (PBC) is defined as an individual's perceived ease or exertion of performing a specific behavior (Ajzen, 1991). PBC deals with one’s assessment of the ability of a particular work. The PBC can be used in various studies to understand the behavior intention in the particular studies (Khoi et al., 2018; Kim & Hwang, 2020; Lin, 2007; Model, 2014; Troise, O’Driscoll, Tani, & Prisco, 2020). The PBC was studied in food delivery to determine the intention and behavior of users to particular services (Kim & Hwang, 2020; Troise et al., 2020). Based on this hypothesis framed as

H3: Perceived Behavior Control will positively influence attitude towards continuing online food delivery services in the post-COVID-19 times.

Various Food Choices (VFC)

Individual food choices are predominantly inclined by such concerns as taste, cost, and convenience. A quality attribute of food delivery apps is food choice. Also reasonable and competitive pricing that allows users to decide on a variety of food is projected to be indispensable in online food delivery apps. The quality attribute of food delivery services is food choices in online food aggregators. Cho and Park (2001) formerly recognized a various food choices as “a suitable selection of products/services with a fair and reasonable price with a variety of choices” as one of the foremost virtual feature that stimuli users’ behavior. Online food delivery services can offer a variety of foods when an individual is fed up with single cuisine. Hence the following hypothesis was proposed.

H4: Various Food Choices will positively influence attitude towards continuing online food delivery services in post-COVID-19 times.

Social Distancing (SDT)

Social distancing refers to actions that subsiding the transmission of COVID-19 by reducing the physical interaction between persons or groups (World Health Organization, 2020). Social distancing is commonly known as physical distancing between people in both indoor and outdoor spaces. The effectiveness of social distancing policies, the food and beverage industries affected most in the particular restaurant industry. The relaxation announced by the government imposed online food delivery services is only be the option for the restaurant owners and consumers. Based on this, the consumers opted online for the mitigation of the virus by maintaining social distancing. Based on this, the hypothesis framed as

H5: Social distancing will positively influence attitude towards continuing online food delivery services in the post-COVID-19 times.

Attitude and Intention towards Continuing Online Food Delivery Services (ATT)

Attitude is defined as consumer preferences when they use definite technologies and devices, Park and Kim (2013). To predict intention to avail services for the past years previous studies engrossed on the attitude to determine the consumer behavior. The attitude plays as an important aspect in predicting the consumer behavior for a long time (Ajzen, 1985, 1991; Bagozzi et al., 2003; Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975; Kiatkawsin and Han, 2017a). The tendency to react in a favourable or unfavourable for a specific deeds (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993) is considered as an evaluative retort to leading instrumental actions. So this study utilized attitude to find out a distinct psychological nature of liking or disliking of using innovative technology.

In most of the technology studies had studied the importance of attitude and the representative theory which used attitude as a major factor to determine is Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1989). Further prominently, the theory proposes that attitude shows a precarious part in the development of an intention to use new technology. That is, when consumers have a promising attitude toward a definite innovative tools, they are more probable to use the new technology in the forthcoming. Hence hypothesized as in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Conceptual Model of the Study

H6: Attitude positively influences intention to continuously use online food delivery services in the post-COVID-19 times.

Measures & Methods

Measurement items for constructs include convenience, trust, perceived behavioral control, various food choices were cited from existing studies. The measurement items of all the constructs were reformed to fit in the perspective of online food delivery services in the post covid-19. More specifically, Convenience was measured with three items adapted from (Cho et al., 2019). Besides, various food choices were measured with three items adapted from (Azizul, Albattat, Ahmad Shahriman, & Irfan, 2019). The measurement items for the constructs of the Theory of Planned Behavior such as perceived behavioral control, attitude, and intention to continuously use were employed from preceding research. Precisely, three items regarding perceived behavioral control were cited from (E.-Y. Lee, Lee, & Jeon, 2017a). Three items for attitude adopted from (Troise et al., 2020), adopted a semantic differential scales (eg. Negative = 1, Positive = 5) to measure attitude and intention to continuously use scales adopted from the study (Alalwan, 2020).

The scale for social distancing was framed by the researchers based on the present behavioral changes of consumers due to the pandemic time. Based on the above measurement items, the questionnaire items were developed. The measurement items reliability were verified using the online pre-test survey based on the fifty food delivery application users in India during the pandemic time. The Cronbach’s alpha value for all the constructs calculated were higher than 0.70 shows the high levels of reliability among constructs (Nunnally, 1978).

Data Collection

The foremost data gathering survey ensued using an online questionnaire. The survey was circulated to consumers who recently used online food delivery services in post-pandemic on major players Swiggy and Zomato, food aggregators in India. The study used a convenience sampling method, hence the questionnaire was sent to 800 respondents in India, distributed google forms through the mail, WhatsApp, and Facebook out of which 690 has received. Of the 690 respondents, 16 respondents were deleted because of multi-collinearity problems. As a result, 674 respondents were used for further analysis.

Data Analysis

Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique using AMOS version 22 was used for testing the theoretical model.

Descriptive Statistics

Table 1 delivers the demographic features of the samples. Between the samples, a total of 381 samples are male (56.5) and 293 samples are female (43.4). Besides, most of the respondent’s ages belong to 21 – 30 years, and only 4.15 percent of aged people contribute to the usage of food delivery services. Couples are most interested in opting for food delivery services than singles and most of the respondents are work from home rather than stepping to the office due to the pandemic situation.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was shown to calculate the measurement model of the suggested conceptual model using Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS) software. The results showed an adequate fit data as Goodness-of-fit statistics: χ2=1250.375, χ2/df = 2.544, Adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI) =0.903, Normed fit index (NFI) =0.925 Comparative Fit Index (CFI) =0.952, and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = 0.063, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) =0.977). All factor loadings are significantly loaded with the related constructs with a specified range. The particular constructs employed in this study and their standardized factor loadings are shown in Table 2. Also, the values of Cronbach's alpha for all constructs are greater than 0.70 (Nunnally, 1978).

Finally, the composite reliability value ranged from 0.772 to 0.863 then the suggested value 0.50 (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988), which showed a high level of internal consistency for each construct.

As presented in Table 3, all values of average variance extracted (AVE) were above 0.5 as suggested value (Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson, & Tatham, 2006), it indicates the convergent validity of all constructs was statistically supported. Lastly, the values of AVE for each variable exceeded all of the squared Intercorrelations between all the possible pairs of constructs, which indicated a high level of discriminant validity (Fornell & Larcker, 1981).

Structural Equation Modelling

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was executed to test a hypothesis framed based on the suggested model. The complete estimate of the model fit showed a suitable fit of the model to the data (Goodness of- fit statistics: χ2=9.929, df=176, χ2/df=4.431, NFI=0.987, CFI=0.992, and RMSEA=0.032). All six hypotheses were statistically supported at p <0.05.

More precisely, hypothesis 1, which offered the effect of convenience on attitude towards online food delivery services, was statistically supported (β = 0.232, p<0.05). Besides, trust has a positive influence on attitude (β = 0.150, p<0.05), so hypothesis 2 was supported. Concerning the TPB model, perceived behavioral control has a positive influence on attitude (β = 0.205, p<0.05), and hypothesis 3 was supported. There is a strong influence by various food choices on attitude towards online food delivery services (β = 0.215, p<0.05), and hence hypothesis 4 supported. The data analysis outcomes presented that social distancing assisted to enhance the attitude towards online food delivery services (β = 0.226, p<0.05), hence hypothesis 5 was supported. Lastly, results revealed that attitude towards OFD services has a strong influence on the continuous intention to use OFD services in post-pandemic time in Table 4 & Figure 2.

Figure 2 Standardized Theoretical Path Co-Efficient

Discussion and Implications

The present study embraced the comprehensive theoretical framework with additional constructs with TPB, the consumer behaviours are ominously affected by the pandemic situation, to investigate behavioural intention towards online food delivery services. The data analyses were directed based on 674 samples in India. All six hypotheses were statistically supported. Moreover, convenience, various food choices, and social distancing are the major factors strongly influenced attitude and there is a strong relationship between attitude and intention to continuously use online food delivery services in the post-pandemic times. These statistical results have the ensuing significant theoretical and practical implications.

Theoretical Implications

The emerging trend of food delivery services has just been studied by various researchers, however, depends on the pandemic times, there is a change of consumer mind. Force of adoption of online food delivery services in the lockdown period to avail the outside food facilities, the online food delivery aggregators played a huge role in the market. This paper measured the current factor “social distancing’ as one the variable to study the consumers' continuing intention towards online food delivery services in the post-pandemic time. And Trust towards online food aggregators is also one of the factors measured based on the present situation. Also contributed to the existing literature, of the TPB model, by extending with factors such as various food choices and convenience along with perceived behavioral control. Moreover, our results highlighted the need for social distancing factor is the strongest measurement of attitude towards online food delivery services. Furthermore, convenience and various food choices were considered as the main determinants in the adoption of online food delivery services. The strong relationships linking between convenience and attitude, confirming previous studies (Troise et al., 2020). From the current economic factor, it is a significant aspect of consumer choice creation related to factors time and location. The online food delivery services to be a convenient way to get comparative benefits such as time and eluding travel outside in the pandemic time.

Moreover, the relevance of various food choices highlights the available food choices for the consumers by initiating the attitude towards online delivery services (Azizul et al., 2019; Cho et al., 2019). Before the arrival of online delivery platforms, the food service was limited to particular menus and cuisines. This online food delivery platforms, made consumers avail various choices by their favorite restaurants at any time and helped to get away from the tired home-cooked meal. The perceived behavioral control is the factor incorporated from the holistic approach of TPB and found as more powerful in previous studies by predicting consumer behavioral intentions (Ajzen, 1991; Testa, Sarti, & Frey, 2019; Troise et al., 2020). From the data analysis results, the perceived behavioral control is significantly and positively associated with an attitude towards online food delivery services.
The trust towards online food aggregators is the major factor in determining the attitude towards online food delivery services (Azizul et al., 2019; Deepika et al., 2016) in the post-pandemic times. Most importantly, in the food market consumers expect to buy trustworthy, innocuous, and adequate quality. Food delivery safety instances and moderations of the supply chain has raised the importance of trust in pandemic times. Thus consumer trust is significant and positively associated with an attitude towards online food delivery services. Our study empowers the prominence of contextual factors in considerate buying behavior in the post-pandemic time. In particular, attitude towards online food delivery services has strongly influencing intention as relevant to results of previous studies (Cheow et al., 2017; Hwang, Kim, & Kim, 2019; E.-Y. Lee, Lee, & Jeon, 2017b) in online food delivery services and more prone to use them in the post-COVID-19.

Managerial Implications

At present, there is an evolution of new users in the online food delivery market. An integrating context with extraordinary progression rates in online food delivery services that aspects precise experiments in the commercial environment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study offers some valuable implications for these platform managers. First, the data analysis results indicated that the social distancing factor plays a huge role in determining the continuing intention of online food delivery services.

Therefore, the food delivery aggregators can utilize this opportunity and can attract new users to continue food delivery services by providing the customers with a quality of food with safety measures and offer a variety of choices. These outcomes propose that the managers should describe policies to benefit users to order and obtain all their food in quality and their delivery persons have to maintain hygiene and social safety. In specific, during this pandemic period, consumers are thoughtful with the rider’s behaviors which are often perceived is not demanding enough in safety. Therefore managers should think new-fangled ways to lessen this destructive judgment and perceived risk less pertinent. The food businesses, policymakers, and the food aggregator’s especially take-away ones should emphasis their exertions on accomplishment of the most intriguing implications from the study.

The study pointed out that the trust level towards online food aggregators is less significant than other factors. So the policymakers and authorities should pay attention to online food delivery services and implement definite procedures to assurance a great level of service excellence and appliance safety measures to away from viruses. The factors implemented in the study can be used by the mangers such as various food choices is also considered one of the important factors in the continuing services towards food delivery services. The variety of food choices made the consumer stay and utilized the services in the current pandemic time. The study explicit, half of the respondents are work from home, so they don’t have time to prepare or bored with the usual menus. This invites to opt the online food delivery, provides various choices of items and different cuisines. So the food aggregators can also use digital food innovation, which is the constant growth in the food delivery market. The most recent phenomenon is cloud kitchens, the restaurants are only meant for online delivery. The new bees and the existing restaurant operators can utilize this social distancing factor and improve their online service during this post-pandemic time.

Limitations and Future Research

The current research delivers intuitive inferences grounded on the pragmatic findings, though the ensuing precincts are considered essential for forthcoming research. First, the investigation of the study was directed only with occupants in India. (Milfont, Duckitt, & Wagner, 2010) To increase validate of the model concerning behavioral intentions to the current market situations, a cross-cultural test is necessary. Further research can discover other consumer characteristics and force online food delivery market underlying forces more effectively by utilizing predictive model techniques. However, a probable addition of this study could also take account of other developing nations in online food delivery, to widen the geographical range of the study. This achieves outcome from diverse circumstances useful to evolving additional inferences from both conjectural and decision-making point of observation. The COVID-19 pandemic will have a substantial pecuniary effect on this particular segment, thus upcoming studies can focus on the pecuniary possessions of online food delivery services.

Conclusion

In recent trends, food delivery platforms are leading consumer trends and enticing substantial investments. Regardless of all the challenges raised during COVID-19 uncertainty and risk to consumer safety, online food delivery has played a huge role in the food market. The dine-in restaurants are shuttered due to lockdown, the OFDs were helped food vendors and restaurant owners to maintain at least minimal sales. In some restaurants, sales were raised in post-pandemic even before lockdown.

New users are also entered to avail of online food delivery services. The research question lies whether the consumer fear towards COVID-19 will continue them in OFD services rather than dine-in restaurants in the post-pandemic too. From the study, the results of data explicitly shown social distancing are the major factor influencing OFD services in the post-pandemic time. And trust towards online food aggregators was also measured to analyze the impact of aggregators among consumers. The trust among food aggregators has to improve by maintaining the quality and safety of food delivered. To maintain social distancing, most of the consumers are preferring online food delivery services rather than dine-in even after the COVID-19 break. The work from home culture has rigors made consumers look for various food choices, boredom with home-cooked meals.

Consumers believe OFDs services will help them to stay safe at home and enjoy the food services rather than dine-in during this post-COVID-19 outbreak.

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