Food delivery applications (FDAs), mobile apps used to order food from food-aggregator
platforms, are a subset of online food delivery (OFD) platforms, which include both restaurantto-consumer delivery and food-ordering platforms (aggregator-to-consumer delivery).One theory-led
examination of consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions toward OFD services relied on
information-system theories of technology acceptance, a contingency framework, and the
extended model of IT continuance (Yeo et al., 2017).Though scholars have shown increasing
interest in studying various aspects of these applications, our extensive literature review reveals
that accumulated knowledge on consumer behavior related to OFDs in general and FDAs in
particular needs further enrichment.Topics covered in the
existing literature include the influence of value systems on the decision to order from O2O food
delivery services (Roh and Park, 2019), the impact of e-service and food quality on customer
loyalty toward OFDs (Suhartanto et al., 2019), the effect of drone food delivery on intentions
(Hwang et al., 2019a), the influence of traffic conditions on significant performance indicators of
OFDs (Correa et al., 2019), and evolutionary food quality (He et al., 2019).The unified theory of acceptance and use of
technology (UTAUT) has been used to investigate the psychological factors that impact the use
of mobile diet apps for ordering food online (Okumus et al., 2018).Notably, much of
the O2O literature focuses on consumer behavior toward online products and services in general;
few studies address consumer attitudes and intentions toward OFDs.Alagoz and
Hekimoglu (2012) have also used the technology acceptance model to explore factors affecting
the attitudes of Internet users toward OFDs.Notably, Statista (2019) projects the revenue
from this platform to the consumer segment to grow globally at 9.8% from 2019 to 2024.The technology-adoption model and the
elaboration likelihood model have been used to investigate consumers' decision-making while
ordering food products through O2O commerce (Kang and Namkung, 2019a).More academic research would better guide practice in an
area showing remarkable growth in America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, with
significant investments and valuations attached to it (Hirschberg et al., 2016).One can estimate the growing
popularity of FDAs from the fact that FDAs are used daily for 15 million food deliveries in China
and 1 million food deliveries in India (Jindal, 2018).While online applications have revolutionized how people shop, even for food, it is necessary
to understand how consumers perceive these services.Jointly,
such platforms represent online-to-offline (O2O) services.