An analysis of a third-party food delivery app during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

PurposeThe study aims to analyze guest comments on the Uber Eats food delivery app (FDA) in the USA during the April–June 2020 COVID-19 pandemic lockdown period. Three aspects influencing customer satisfaction with the FDA were evaluated in this study: (1) performance on the app, (2) product quality and (3) service quality.Design/methodology/approachOne thousand customer comments posted on the Uber Eats Google Play app from April 1 to June 30, 2020 were analyzed in this study. The text mining technique was applied to discover the hidden, but meaningful patterns from the unstructured text. Content analysis was applied to systematically analyze the text into organized categories and themes.FindingsAmong the three dimensions evaluated in this study, the most important dimension regarding customers' perceptions toward the FDA was the service quality dimension (40.02%), followed by the FDA's performance dimension (39.43%) and the product quality dimension (20.54%) was least important. Additionally, customers' perceptions towards the three dimensions were all unfavorable and there were more negative comments than the positive comments: FDAs (P/N = 0.728), product quality (P/N = 0.60) and service quality (P/N = 0.865).Originality/valuePrevious studies investigating FDAs assessed solely the performance of the app. However, customers' experience of a food delivery service is comprised of multiple components including the app, the restaurant and the delivery driver. To fill the void, this study evaluated a third-party app performance, product quality and service quality to capture the totality of customers' food delivery service experience.

Online food delivery companies' performance and consumers expectations during Covid-19: An investigation using machine learning approach

“…As count or percent contribution is shown in Table 5 , overall, perceived consumer responsibility, delivery operations, social responsibility, perceived negative impact, free delivery, etc., are the most prominent dimensions related to OFD companies across emerging and developed countries. These findings differ from the previous literature ( Chen McCain et al, 2021 ; Dsouza and Sharma, 2021 ; Shah et al, 2021 ; Trivedi and Singh, 2021 ) that observed food quality and safety measures, socialization, and marketing are the main themes for OFD companies during COVID-19. Our topics seem more enlightening and COVID-19 pandemic-oriented rather than topics related to the usual expectations from OFD companies.…”

“…Exceptions to this are financial impact and consumers' perceived behaviors of Zomato; delivery operations of Swiggy; promocode and food delivery of Uber Eats. These findings are different from the findings of Chen McCain et al (2021) in the sense that they found that negative sentiment is more than positive sentiment.…”

“…Their findings suggest that satisfaction is the main predictor of loyalty, whereas mobile app information design has the highest impact on satisfaction and loyalty. Chen McCain et al (2021) assessed customers' satisfaction with Uber Eats on different dimensions—OFD apps performance, food quality, and service quality during the first wave of COVID-19 in the US. They found that service quality was the most important dimension, followed by OFD app performance and food quality.…”

“…The OFD service platforms were instrumental for restaurants to remain in business during challenging times ( Puram et al, 2021 ). Compared to March 2019, customer spending on food delivery increased significantly (i.e., 70 percent)—during the first COVID-19 wave in March 2020 ( Chen McCain et al, 2021 ).…”

“…For example, Indian OFD workers have faced personal and social risks, ranging from loss of income to exposure to COVID-19 and risking their lives ( Lalvani and Seetharaman, 2020 ). The OFD became crucial and popular as millions of people were quarantined and unquarantined required foods ( Chen McCain et al, 2021 ; Kim et al, 2021 ). While delivering food, OFD companies needed to follow strict COVID-19 appropriate behaviors; otherwise, riders and consumers would be exposed to life-threatening health risks.…”