Research by: Shweta Pandey, Deepak Chawla, & Sandeep Puri
Executive Summary
The changing lifestyles of consumers, increasing purchase power, and dearth of time have shifted consumers’ eating habits and resulted in an upsurge in the consumption of fast and convenience food. Further, a change in consumer food habits, along with an improvement in telecommunications and the low cost of smartphones, has fueled the development of food delivery apps (FDAs). FDAs bring significant benefits to both producers and consumers as they enable more food producers to sell directly to consumers and reach out to new consumers across geographies and simultaneously provide more value and choice to consumers.
Statista (2019d) estimates the worldwide revenue in the online food delivery market might reach a market volume of USD156,819 million by 2023, with the delivery market outpacing the overall restaurant industry growth. FDAs include restaurant-to-consumer delivery (e.g., McDonald’s, Domino’s, etc.) and platform-to-consumer delivery apps (e.g., Food Panda, etc.). These platform-to-consumer delivery apps vary across continents, for example, GrubHub in the US, Swiggy in India, and Just Eat in the U.K. Some FDAs even have a multi-national presence like Uber Eats and Food Panda. This creates opportunities and challenges, especially when FDAs try to globally standardise their service delivery (Lovelock and Wirtz, 2007). The challenges arise because countries across the world have different levels of adoption of online food delivery.
This study explores and compares the reasons for or against including situational triggers on the adoption of food delivery apps (FDAs) across lesser-researched Asian countries like India and the Philippines. The study utilises a qualitative research methodology using focus group discussions and interviews across each country. Respondents from India highlighted the importance of convenience, aggressive discounts, app service quality, fulfilment, and multiple payment options as the key reasons for adopting the FDAs. However, these factors require redressal in the Philippines context. Also, the study findings highlight some country-specific requirements: in the Philippines, food packaging, cheaper options provided by the local convenience stores, and lack of variety of food options; in India, the impact of parental beliefs and segregated vegetarian food delivery. The study makes practical suggestions for consumer behaviour researchers, developers, and marketers of FDAs who are confronted with challenges in app development for a multi-cultural audience and to ensure growth and the adoption of the FDAs across the two countries. This is one of the first studies to compare diverse national markets to uncover differences and similarities in the factors impacting the adoption of FDAs. The results highlight the impact of varying levels of evolution of FDAs and social, technological, and cultural contextual differences on the adoption of the FDAs across India and the Philippines.
To cite this article: Pandey, S., Chawla, D., & Puri, S. (2021). Food delivery apps (FDAs) in Asia: an exploratory study across India and the Philippines. British Food Journal. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-01-2020-0074
To access this article: https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-01-2020-0074
About the journal
British Food Journal (BFJ) continues to be highly respected worldwide for its broad and unique interdisciplinary coverage of the latest food-related double blind peer-reviewed research. It links all sectors of this dynamic industry, keeping abreast of emerging trends, topical and controversial issues and informing and stimulating debate.
