Customers' dining choice using meal ordering apps: insights from China and Indonesia
Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics
ISSN: 1355-5855
Article publication date: 6 September 2022
Issue publication date: 26 May 2023
Abstract
Purpose
Meal ordering apps (MOAs) have transformed the customers' dining habits, particularly during mobility restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the theoretical cover of the extended stimulus–organism–response (SOR) model, this paper attempts to explore the critical antecedents and outcomes of customer MOA engagement which predict the continuous purchase intentions using these apps. A multigroup analysis is conducted to investigate the difference between the hypothesized relationships between the Chinese and Indonesian consumers.
Design/methodology/approach
A mixed-method approach, including a systematic literature review, an open-ended essay (qualitative) with 139 MOA users and an online survey (quantitative) with 1,207 MOA users in total, was used for hypotheses testing.
Findings
The structural equation model results revealed that customer MOA experience factors such as mobile online reviews (MR), food quality (FQ), restaurant reputation (RR), service quality and system quality (SyQ) are the absolute positive factors that influence customer MOA cognitive, affective and behavioral engagement, which in turn affect continuous purchase intentions. The multigroup analysis results reveal that Chinese customers prioritized MR and FQ for customer MOA engagement (cognitive, affective and behavioral). Comparatively, Indonesian customers placed most importance on RR and SyQ.
Originality/value
Considering a market-specific setting and based on the extended SOR framework, this study is one of the first to take a comprehensive look at the critical antecedents and outcome of multidimensional customer MOA engagement in the developing countries’ (China and Indonesia) online to offline meal delivery context. Further, this study investigates the customer continuous purchase intentions as an outcome of MOA engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings also reveal the differences in consumer behavior across the two developing but culturally diverse countries samples during the pandemic.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the MSIT (Ministry of Science and ICT), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) support program (IITP-2022–2017-0-01630) supervised by the IITP (Institute for Information & communications Technology Promotion).
We thank Dr. Adnan Bakather and Dr. Amir Zaib Abbasi from King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia for assistance with methodology, formal analysis, compilation of the revised draft, language editing and for comments that greatly improved the manuscript. All authors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Citation
Shah, A.M., Qayyum, A. and Lee, K. (2023), "Customers' dining choice using meal ordering apps: insights from China and Indonesia", Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 35 No. 6, pp. 1443-1473. https://doi.org/10.1108/APJML-11-2021-0828
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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