The value proposition of food delivery apps from the perspective of theory of consumption value

Purpose The theory of consumption values (TCV) has successfully explained much consumer choice behavior, but few studies have investigated the values that drive food-delivery application (FDA) use. This study aims to bridge this gap by extending the TCV to the FDA context to examine food consumption-related values and interpreting and rechristening generic consumption values to adapt the TCV to the FDA context. Design/methodology/approach An explorative mixed-method research approach was taken to conduct focus group discussions with 20 target users to develop the questionnaire and then administer it for a cross-sectional survey (pen and pencil) to FDA users aged 22–65 years; 423 complete responses so received were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Findings The findings show that epistemic value (“visibility”) is the chief driver of purchase intentions toward FDAs, followed by conditional (“affordances”), price (part of functional value) and social value (“prestige”). Food-safety concerns and health consciousness (proposed as part of functional value) did not share any statistically significant association with purchase intentions toward FDAs. Research limitations/implications The findings of this study are insightful for FDA service providers competing for higher shares in the market by helping them understand ways to influence consumer choices and purchase intentions. Originality/value It is the first study that combines FDAs 2014 an online service that it is attracting a lot of investment 2014and TCV which has continued to be one of the most relevant theories of consumer behavior. It extends the TCV by adapting it to the FDA context with food-consumption-related values. Thus, it adds to the relatively scant literature on FDAs on the whole which is essential, as FDAs represent the business model of new economy, i.e. online-to-offline (O2O). Finally, this study formulates a conceptual framework that may serve as the basis of future research.publishedVersio

“Untact”: a new customer service strategy in the digital age

The Industry 4.0 era has brought a shift in consumers’ purchasing behaviors from traditional retailing to online and/or mobile channels, triggered by advanced digital technologies and an easy access to the global market. Smart digital devices and advanced technologies have enabled “untact” service, facilitating customer encounters without a face-to-face contact with employees. This study presents the concept of untact service based on a review of the literature on technology-enabled customer encounters with service providers and analysis of several real-world cases. The results indicate that untact services are becoming widespread in various areas of daily life, such as ordering food at franchise restaurants via digital devices, handling financial transactions without visiting a bank branch through e-banking apps, and using online or mobile order systems for a multitude of products/services. This study elaborates implications of untact service in terms of new opportunities and challenges involved when it is implemented as a new customer service strategy

Does social proof and herd behaviour drive food choices of consumers?

PurposePeople often look to the opinions and actions of others to guide their food choices, especially when they are uncertain or unfamiliar with a particular food. This influence can be positive or negative depending on the context and can have an impact on food consumption and health outcomes. Design/methodology/approachThe paper analysed data from 500 young adult consumers in China and employed a multi-study design to examine various aspects of social proof and herd behaviour in food choices. Experiment 1 examined the influence of testimonials from an influential person on buying decisions and eating behaviour. Experiment 2 explored whether herd behaviour drives food options. Experiment 3 assessed the influence of social proof on food choices. Chi-square tests of independence were conducted to examine the relationship between social proof and food choice, as well as herd behaviour and food decision-making. Several logit regression analyses were performed to identify the factors that drive consumers' susceptibility to social proof and herding. FindingsThe results indicated that the source of feedback, whether from an influential person or a family member, did not have a statistically significant effect on the likelihood of following the food guide recommendations. The preference for a healthier food option was stronger than following the herd. In contrast, social proof in the form of reviews and ratings influenced participants' choices. The paper highlights the usefulness for stakeholders and policymakers seeking to promote healthier eating habits. OriginalityThe originality lies in its comprehensive approach, combining multiple experiments and analytical methods.<br/

Composition de services basée sur les relations sociales entre objets dans l’IoT Service composition based on social relations between things in IoT

With the rapid development of service-oriented computing applications and social Internet ofthings (SIoT), it is becoming more and more difficult for end-users to find relevant services to create value-added composite services in this big data environment. Therefore, this work proposes S-SCORE (Social Service Composition based on Recommendation), an approach for interactive web services composition in SIoT ecosystem for end-users. The main contribution of this work is providing a novel recommendation approach, which enables to discover and suggest trustworthy and personalized web services that are suitable for composition. The first proposed model of recommendation aims to face the problem of information overload, which enables to discover services and provide personalized suggestions for users without sacrificing the recommendation accuracy. To validate the performance of our approach, seven variant algorithms of different approaches (popularity-based, user-based and item-based) are compared using MovieLens 20M dataset. The experiments show that our model improves the recommendation accuracy by 12% increase with the highest score among compared methods. Additionally it outperforms the compared models in diversity over all lengths of recommendation lists. The second proposed approach is a novel recommendation mechanism for service composition, which enables to suggest trustworthy and personalized web services that are suitable for composition. The process of recommendation consists of online and offline stages. In the offline stage, two models of similarity computation are presented. Firstly, an improved users’ similarity model is provided to filter the set of advisors for an active user. Then, a new service collaboration model is proposed that based on functional and non-functional features of services, which allows providing a set of collaborators for the active service. The online phase makes rating prediction of candidate services based on a hybrid algorithm that based on collaborative filtering technique. The proposed method gives considerable improvement on the prediction accuracy. Firstly, it achieves the lowest value in MAE (Mean Absolute Error) metric and the highest coverage values than other compared traditional collaborative filtering-based prediction approaches

Social support, social capital and online community e-loyalty: an empirical study

Online communities, as an essential manifestation of online social relationships, sociality factors (including social support factors and social relationship factors, etc.) ought to facilitate the formation of community trust and community satisfaction. However, although the existing literature has explored the underlying mechanisms of online community trust and satisfaction formation, few studies implemented research from the integrated sociality perspectives. In this thesis, we integrate social capital theory and social support theory to consider social capital and social support as important antecedent social factors in forming community trust and community satisfaction, which influence users' trust and satisfaction in online communities. Community trust and satisfaction further promote community loyalty. Specifically, this thesis scrutinizes the influence of three levels of social support factors such as information support, emotional support, and human-computer network management support and three kinds of social capital such as structure, cognition, and relationship to online community trust and satisfaction. Based on the proposed research model, 430 online community users' survey data were collected through an empirical questionnaire and the research model was tested through the partial least squares structural equation model method. The results of the thesis suggest that social support factors, including information support, emotional support, and interpersonal network interaction support, and social capital factors including structural capital, relational capital, and cognitive capital significantly affect community users' loyalty not only directly but also indirectly through enhancing community users' trust and satisfaction. Thus, users' trust and satisfaction with the community are significant mediating variables.Nas comunidades online, como uma importante manifestação das relações sociais online, os fatores de socialidade (incluindo fatores de apoio social e fatores de relacionamento social) devem facilitar a formação de confiança e satisfação da comunidade. No entanto, embora a literatura existente tenha explorado os mecanismos subjacentes à formação da confiança e da satisfação da comunidade online, poucos estudos consideraram a perspectiva social de forma integrada. Nesta tese, integramos a teoria do capital social e a teoria do suporte social para considerar o capital social e o suporte social como importantes fatores sociais antecedentes na formação da confiança e satisfação da comunidade, que influenciam a confiança e a satisfação dos utilizadores em comunidades online. A confiança e a satisfação da comunidade promovem ainda mais a lealdade da comunidade. Especificamente, esta tese estuda a influência de três níveis de fatores de suporte social - suporte de informação, suporte emocional e suporte de gestão da relação homen-computador - e três tipos de capital social - estrutura, cognição e relacionamento - na confiança e satisfação da comunidade online. Com base no modelo de pesquisa proposto, 430 observações de utilizadores de comunidades online foram recolhidos através de um questionário. O modelo de pesquisa foi testado através de métodos de equação estruturais. Os resultados da tese relevam que fatores de suporte social, incluindo suporte de informação, suporte emocional e suporte de interação de rede interpessoal, e fatores de capital social, incluindo capital estrutural, capital relacional e capital cognitivo, afetam significativamente a lealdade dos utilizadores da comunidade, não apenas diretamente mas também indiretamente, aumentando a confiança e a satisfação dos utilizadores da comunidade; a confiança e a satisfação dos usuários com a comunidade são variáveis mediadoras importantes

Modelling, Monitoring, Control and Optimization for Complex Industrial Processes

This reprint includes 22 research papers and an editorial, collected from the Special Issue "Modelling, Monitoring, Control and Optimization for Complex Industrial Processes", highlighting recent research advances and emerging research directions in complex industrial processes. This reprint aims to promote the research field and benefit the readers from both academic communities and industrial sectors

Social informatics

5th International Conference, SocInfo 2013, Kyoto, Japan, November 25-27, 2013, Proceedings</p

E-teenuse kvaliteedi ja toidu kvaliteedi roll klientide rahulolus veebipõhise toidu kohaletoimetamise teenusega

Master’s thesis Curriculum in Agri-Food Business ManagementThe current age requires that almost all human endeavors be fast-paced. This has brought about the need for food to be ordered online as customers may not have the luxury of time to cook food by themselves or the least go to restaurants to eat therein. However, it is also expected that such service be rendered in consideration of certain qualities that will adequately satisfied customers. Although there are many related studies to the current one i.e. Prabowo & Nugroho (2018) in the context of Indenesia, Dang et al (2018) focuses on Haoni, Vietnam while author as Siddiqi (2011) focuses on banking sector in Bangladesh. The current study seeks to examine the role of e-service quality and food quality in influencing customers’ satisfaction towards online food delivery service in Estonia. The goal is to see how both e-service quality and food quality can help to influence customers’ satisfaction towards adopting OFD service. Two main types of data, primary and secondary data were used; the secondary setting a theoretical basis for the empirical work. The primary data is quantitative nature, suggesting that research adopted a survey using questionnaire to elicit data from respondents. 154 persons responded by answering the questions accordingly. The questionnaire contained 14 questions 10 close-ended and 4 open-ended questions. Quantitative data was analysed using descriptive analysis attended with tabular representation of data as well as with charts followed by a correlation analysis, while the open ended was done through discussion. To this end, the finding of study reveals that both e-service quality and food quality are factors that satisfy customers’ towards online food delivery service, as respondents’ opinions show a direct relationship between the level of quality in the two variables and customers’ behavioural pattern. This result agrees with those of Persad & Padayachee (2015) and Lee & Joshi (2007) among others, who have earlier researched in this area of study but from different contexts. Therefore, stakeholders, in restaurants and the major players in the e-service end must ensure that these qualities are present in their services in order to satisfy customers towards adopting OFD service.Praegune ajastu nõuab inimestelt tõtlikkust pea kõigis ettevõtmistes. See on tekitanud vajaduse tellida toitu veebist, kuna klientidel ei pruugi olla piisavalt aega, et ise toitu valmistada või vähemalt söögikohta minna. Siiski oodatakse ka, et sellise teenuse osutamisel arvestataks kindlate omadustega, et kliente piisavalt rahuldada. On olemas mitmeid käesolevale uurimistööle sarnaseid uurimusi. Näiteks Prabowo & Nugroho (2018) Indoneesia kontekstis, Dang et al (2018) keskenduvad Hanoile Vietnamis, samas kui Siddiqi (2011) keskendub pangandussektorile Bangladeshis. Siinse uurimistöö eesmärk on uurida e-teeninduse ning toidu kvaliteedi mõju klientide rahulolule veebipõhise toidu kullerteenuse süsteemiga Eestis. Peamiseks eesmärgiks on näha, kuidas nii e-teeninduse, kui ka toidu kvaliteet aitavad mõjutada klientide rahulolu veebipõhise toidu kullerteenusega. Autor kasutas uurimistöö käigus peamiselt kahte liiki andmeid: esmaseid andmeid ning sekundaar. Esmased andmed on kvantitatiivse loomuga, mis viitab sellele, et uurimistöö kasutas küsimustiku põhist uuringut, et vastajatelt uurimisandmeid saada. Uuringu käigus vastas küsimustikule 154 inimest. Küsimustik koosnes 14 küsimusest, millest 10 olid valikvastustega ning neli avatud küsimused. Kvantitatiivseid andmeid analüüsis autor kirjeldava analüüsi meetodil tabulaarse esitlusega ning diagrammidega korrelatsioonanalüüsis. Avatud küsimuste vastuseid analüüsis autor arutlevalt. Uuringu tulemustest selgub, et nii e-teeninduse, kui ka toidu kvaliteet on olulised tegurid klientide rahulolus toidu kullerteenusega, kuna vastajate arvamused näitavad selget suhet toidu ja e-teeninduse kvaliteedi ning klientide käitumismustrite vahel. See tulemus on kooskõlas Persad & Padayachee (2015), Lee & Joshi (2007) ning teiste uurimuste tulemustega, mis uurimisvaldkonnas teistes kontekstides läbi on viidud. Seetõttu peaksid restoranide omanikud ning peamised e-teenuse pakkujad tagama kvaliteedi oma teenustes, et rahuldada kliente veebipõhise toidu kullerteenuse kasutamisel