Sustainable Management of Online to Offline Delivery Apps for Consumers’ Reuse Intention: Focused on the Meituan Apps

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed our daily life, especially in the food industry. This study aims to examine the sustainable factors that influence the reuse intention in China’s online-to-offline (O2O) food delivery industry, using “Meituan Waimai” app users as the objects of investigation. Meituan had great success in the initial stage of business due to the rapid urbanization of the major Chinese cities, and thus it is planning to enter the second and third level of cities in China. However, this may not be sustainable because beginner’s luck does not hold unless it is supported by sustainable governance. To evaluate the online and offline governance of O2O business, we used five service quality factors (convenience, safety, economy, accuracy, and speed) in a structural equation model. Customer satisfaction and reuse intention are used as mediating and dependent variables, respectively. The main findings are as follows. First, among the service characteristics, economy and speed factors did not perfectly mediate satisfaction, implying that the initial stage of success may not be sustainable. O2O service providers in China should put more effort into customizing economic incentives as well as making an appropriate impression regarding the delivery speed. Second, satisfaction is fully supported by other factors, implying that O2O service providers should take into account feedback from the people in the market and consumers.

Comparing Models with Positive Anticipated Emotions, Food Values, Attitudes and Subjective Norms as Influential Factors in Fast-Food Purchase Intention during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Two Channels: Restaurants and Mobile Apps

“…The literature review confirmed that several Sustainability 2021, 13, 12857 2 of 16 variables from the Theory of Planned Behavior (hereafter TPB) influence food purchase intention [12][13][14][15][16][17]. According to Ellison et al (2021) [18], there is an ongoing shift toward online food purchasing, while Choi et al (2021) [10] affirmed that more people are using food delivery apps. Several studies on such delivery apps have found that they can impact loyalty, service quality, packaging and customer satisfaction [19].…”

“…Against this background, the present research seeks to determine the factors that positively and significantly influence consumers' food purchasing during the COVID-19 pandemic under two situations: whether people (1) are eating at a fast-food restaurant and (2) are using a food delivery service via mobile apps. To this end, we followed several studies and emphasized purchase intention as an important factor [9][10][11]. The literature review confirmed that several Sustainability 2021, 13, 12857 2 of 16 variables from the Theory of Planned Behavior (hereafter TPB) influence food purchase intention [12][13][14][15][16][17].…”

Consumer Behavior in Online-to-Offline (O2O) Commerce: A Thematic Review

“…SERVQUAL has explained the service quality in the majority of O2O scenarios. Nevertheless, many similar constructs have been proposed to better understand consumer behavior, such as accuracy [16], efficiency [26], and interaction quality [72]. Delivery service quality is a unique service quality dimension in the O2O food delivery scenario.…”

“…The compatibility adapted from the diffusion of innovations theory developed by Rogers [84] is another factor that determines consumers' technology use behavior, whose similar constructs are facilitating conditions and perceived behavior control [45,46]. Some researchers also discussed the technical attributes of O2O commerce from the perspective of system quality, such as system safety [16,32] and privacy protection [14]. These technical or utilitarian factors were mentioned in the reviewed articles and constructed into a theme, as shown in Figure 5.…”

“…Although O2O commerce has been very popular and has shown to be a successful business model [8], its sustainability is unknown. The rapid expansion of O2O commerce has raised concerns that this business model may not be sustainable [16]. It is necessary to identify current trends in O2O commerce to inform the development of sustainable strategies and the implementation of sustainable management.…”