Barriers and paradoxical recommendation behaviour in online to offline (O2O) services. A convergent mixed-method study

Mobile apps offering online to offline (O2O) services act as aggregators providing interface for delivery of required products and services at a preferred location. Despite offering multiple affordances, many O2O services have not diffused as anticipated, indicating the existence of consumer resistance towards them. One such example is that of food delivery apps (FDAs), which are experiencing resistance at both the pre-adoption and post-adoption stage. However, there are scarce empirical findings explicating the pre-and post-adoption barriers perceived to be associated with FDAs. The present study addresses this gap by utilising the Innovation Resistance Theory (IRT) and a convergent mixed-method study design to examine the barriers that existing FDA users face and how these impinge on their trust and valence of recommendation behaviour (positive and negative word of mouth). The study not only extends the classic IRT barriers to the FDA-context by identifying three key barriers (economic, efficiency, and experience) but also offers empirical evidence to support the negative association of barriers with trust and paradoxical recommendation behaviour by analysing data collected from 303 FDA users through Prolific. The findings also support the mediation effect of trust and the moderation effect of advertisement overload on the identified associations, making interesting theoretical and practical contributions.publishedVersio

Psychographic And Behavioral Segmentation Of Food Delivery Application Customers To Increase Intention To Use

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceThis study presents a framework for segmenting Food Delivery Application (FDA) customers based on psychographic and behavioral variables as an alternative to existing segmentation. Customer segments are proposed by applying clustering methods to primary data from an electronic survey. Psychographic and behavioral constructs are formulated as hypotheses based on existing literature, and then evaluated as segmentation variables regarding their discriminatory power for customer segmentation. Detected relevant variables are used in the application of clustering techniques to find adequate boundaries within customer groupings for segmentation purposes. Characterization of customer segments is performed and enriched with implications of findings in FDA marketing strategies. This paper contributes to theory by providing new findings on segmentation that are relevant for an online context. In addition, it contributes to practice by detailing implications of customer segments in an online sales strategy, allowing marketing managers and FDA businesses to capitalize knowledge in their conversion funnel designs

Balancing food waste and sustainability goals in online food delivery: Towards a comprehensive conceptual framework

Increasing food waste is a major threat to sustainability and food security. Recognizing the issue, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 mandates reducing global food waste by 50 percent by 2030. This situation has also given impetus to academic research on consumer food waste in both household and out-of-home settings. However, food delivery apps (FDAs) remain under-researched from this perspective. This is a serious gap because operating under a business model that inherently facilitates food over-ordering, FDAs can be a major source of food waste. Understanding the demand-side factors that drive consumers to order more food than required to satiate their hunger can be useful in mitigating such wasteful indulgences. Noting this, we extend the seminal theory of planned behavior (TPB) to propose direct and intervening mechanisms that can better explicate why consumers indulge in a ‘shopping routine’ of ordering more food than required. We analyzed data from 487 FDA users to test the proposed hypotheses. Our results reveal the positive associations of (a) attitude and subjective norms with usage intentions and (b) trust, intentions, and leftover reuse routine with shopping routine. In addition, both proposed moderators—i.e., willingness to pay for eco-friendly packaging and number of years of FDA usage—do, in fact, moderate the associations of leftover reuse routine with both usage intentions and shopping routine. These findings can help marketers and policymakers devise appropriate strategies to promote pro-environmental green behaviors among FDA users without harming the commercial interests of the sector

Exploring user behaviours on mobile technologies combined with payment functions during the COVID-19 pandemic

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Information Management, specialization in Information TechnologiesWith the extensive spread of smart mobile devices, mobile technologies and services have revolutionised and pervaded significantly in most aspects of human life, such as social communication, commerce, entertainment, etc. Various industries have integrated services and products with mobile financial transaction technologies, facilitating the payment services combined with various mobile applications. The wide adoption of mobile transactions has increased the efficiency of transaction processes, met the expectations of customers and the requirements of enterprises, and supported the social-economic development in different scenarios, especially under the pandemic situation. Understanding mobile device users’ perceptions and behaviours on mobile technologies combining payment functions under the COVID-19 pandemic situation has reinforced the need to embark on a deeper investigation of customer behaviours during the pandemic. For these reasons, this study contributes to the advancement of knowledge and implementation methods for a better understanding of the determinants of customers’ behavioural intentions of using mobile technologies combined with payment functions in a total of seven separate studies. The investigation begins with a systematic literature review on mobile payment studies presented in chapter two. This research is augmented by investigating users’ continuance usage intention of mobile payments under the COVID-19 pandemic in chapter three. The fourth chapter analyses the determinants of continuance usage intention of food delivery apps during the pandemic. Chapters five and six present two theoretical development studies about the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and UTAUT2, respectively. The seventh chapter investigates customers’ psychological shopping processes via live-streaming shopping apps during the pandemic lockdown period. In epistemological terms, this study involved conjoint positivist and interpretivist research in behavioural information systems research. A qualitative research method was applied in chapters two, five and six, and a quantitative research method was implemented in the third, fourth and seventh chapters. The main theoretical foundations applied and validated in three empirical studies were UTAUT and UTAUT2. Specifically, chapter three integrates UTAUT with Mental Accounting Theory, the fourth chapter combines UTAUT with the Expectancy Confirmation Model, and chapter seven integrates UTAUT2 with the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework and Flow theory. This study found that performance expectancy, social influence, and trust significantly affect users’ behavioural intentions in all three empirical studies. Customers’ mental cognitions, such as perceived benefits, satisfaction, flow and perceived value, positively formulate users’ behavioural intention in the three studies, respectively. Hedonic motivation and flow significantly influence users' behavioural intention when mobile technologies contain payment and entertainment features. Moreover, this study contributes several theoretical and practical implications. This study facilitates the advancement of knowledge of mobile technologies adoption through three verified theoretical frameworks and two proposed developed theoretical models and appropriate measurement methods. Meanwhile, this study supports relevant stakeholders in mobile technologies, enterprises, policymakers, service providers, and marketing departments with valuable findings and discussions for comprehensively understanding the determinants of customers’ behaviours on mobile technologies combined payment function

Assessing the effect of mobile word-of-mouth on consumers : the physical, psychological and social influences

Mobile technologies enable users to discover and research products anytime, anywhere. Mobile devices allow consumers to create and share content based on physical location, facilitate seamless interactions, and provide context-relevant information that can better satisfy users’ needs and enhance their shopping experience. As consumers increasingly rely on mobile devices to search information and purchase products, they need immediate, updated, informative and credible opinions in concise forms. Meanwhile, marketers face unprecedented opportunities for mobile marketing, making ever important for them to understand the mobile word-of-mouth and its effect on the purchase behaviors of consumers on the mobile platform vs. those on other devices. Drawing from the media richness theory and the principle of compensatory adaptation, study one performs sentiment analysis of online product reviews from both mobile and desktop devices by analyzing over one million customer reviews from Dianping.com. We find that mobile reviews are naturally shorter, contain more adverbs and adjectives, and have smaller readership and less votes of helpfulness. The product ratings from mobile reviews are more polarized yet the average valence of mobile reviews is higher. By comparison, desktop reviews contain more pictures and are rated more helpful. Lastly, pricy products receive more desktop reviews than mobile ones. Study two draws from the construal level theory and posit that WOM from mobile devices reflects closer psychological distances (temporal and social), thus constitutes a lower construal level than that from desktop computers. Using a dataset of over one million product reviews from Dianping.com, we assess the value of online product reviews from mobile devices in comparison with those from the desktop computers. Our findings show that WOM is more helpful when it is socially and temporally closer to the users and this effect is amplified when using mobile devices, which bring the mental construal to a low level and make others’ opinions more relevant. Further, we show that product type moderates the effect of online reviews in that m-WOM is more influential for hedonic products and its value for the utilitarian consumption is the lowest. Study three deploys the observational learning theory to examine the effect of WOM across the mobile and desktop devices on the purchase behavior of online promotional offers. The findings suggest that the effect of WOM on the purchase of promotion offers varies significantly across the platforms, product categories, and discount rates. These findings help better understand the strengths, limitations and the effect of m-WOM as marketers attempt to offer consumers context-sensitive and time-critical promotions through mobile devices and make a significant contribution to the literature on interactive marketing. These studies render meaningful implications for theory development about the role of mobile technologies in marketing and can assist practitioners formulating effective promotional strategies through the electronic channels via mobile and desktop devices