COVID-19 lockdown and the satisfaction with online food delivery providers/El confinamiento por COVID-19 y la satisfaccion respecto a las empresas de pedidos de comida a domicilio/O confinamento por COVID-19 e a satisfacao com as empresas de entrega de comida em domicilio.
| Autor | Macias-Rendon, Washington |
| Cargo | Research article |
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Introduction
The online food delivery sector has been growing at high rates worldwide in the last years. Its revenues have risen from US$76,193 million in 2017 to US$122,739 million in 2020 (17.2% average annual growth), with an expectation to reach US$164,002 million for 2025 (Statista, 2020). Moreover, during the COVID-19 lockdown, more online delivery providers have emerged and more restaurants have turned to the delivery format (Dishman, 2020). Even restaurants offering their products only through delivery have emerged; a practice that provides the opportunity to new entrants with low fixed costs. Therefore, nowadays this activity has gained relevance not only for established but also for new businesses.
Since March 17, 2020, the Ecuadorian government decreed mobility restrictions within the country, closed borders to all foreign travellers due to the spread of the coronavirus, and suspended face-to-face work in the government and private sectors; however, prioritized sectors (e.g., utilities, security, health) and delivery services were allowed to operate with specific guidelines (Comité de Operaciones de Emergencia Nacional--COE, 2020). By July 27, 2020, Ecuador was one of the most affected countries by COVID-19 in the world (#17), and the fourth most affected in South America with 313 deaths and 4,596 cases per million people (5,532 total deaths and 81,161 total cases reported) (Worldometer, 2020). However, non-official estimations suggested that the number of deaths was significantly higher than the figures reported by the government (León & Kurmanaev, 2020).
Due to the lockdown, the entertainment, hospitality and restaurant sectors are the most affected in Ecuador. Most restaurant and cafe owners projected a fall in sales of 30% or more during 2020 (Castillo & Zhangallymbay, 2020). During this crisis, delivery providers emerged as an alternative to mitigate the drop in sales. Thus, 46% of restaurants and cafes had a delivery service before the lockdown, but 92% expected to offer the service during the confinement (Castillo & Zhangallymbay, 2020). A similar scenario was evident worldwide during the COVID-19 lockdown, as reported above.
Preserving customer satisfaction is crucial for service firms to influence trust and loyalty in crisis times (Monferrer-Tirado, Estrada-Guillén, Fandos-Roig, Moliner-Tena & García, 2016). In the digital world, it has been demonstrated that e-satisfaction is positively associated with consumer spending (Nisara & Prabhakar, 2017). Thus, firms must be aware of what drives customer satisfaction within their specific industries, particularly when they are facing economic difficulties. Since COVID-19 crisis has brought several changes in doing business and customer perceptions, attitudes and behaviour (Deloitte, 2020), it becomes pertinent to study eventual changes in attitudes, customer satisfaction and its antecedents. The literature on online services has evidenced that e-service quality and food quality impact e-satisfaction (Suhartanto, Helmi, Tan, Sjahroeddin & Kusdibyo, 2019). We suggest that the customer interaction with the delivery worker is another source of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with online food delivery providers (ODP), according to a vast literature in the service industry (e.g., Alhelalat, Habiballah & Twaissi, 2017; Jang & Namkung, 2009; Macias, Rodriguez & Barriga, 2020; Wall & Berry, 2007). The most obvious way of estimating changes in the proposed variables is comparing its levels and relationships before versus during the COVID-19 lockdown. According to the literature review carried out here, to date there is no academic publication addressing the study of determinants of satisfaction with ODPs during the lockdown in Ecuador. A couple of studies are limited to reporting the emergence of a greater number of businesses of this type during the pandemic (Játiva & Cabezas, 2020) and the fact that biosafety measures are being taken for food delivery (Bernal-Álava, Solórzano-Solórzano, Burgos-Salazar & Cantos-Figueroa, 2020).
Given the growing importance of the food delivery sector within service industries worldwide, this study has two purposes: (i) to qualitatively explore the main attitudes towards online food delivery providers in Ecuador in times of COVID-19, and (ii) to quantitatively investigate whether there is a change in customer satisfaction with this service and three antecedents: e-service quality, personal aspects of the delivery workers, and perceived food quality.
The following section presents the theoretical foundations of the proposed model, the third and fourth sections describe the methodology and results of the qualitative and quantitative phases of this research, respectively. Finally, discussion and conclusions are provided.
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Theoretical background and conceptual model
Service literature has turned its attention into the e-world, mainly in the last two decades. The works of Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Malhotra (2002), and Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Malhotra (2005) define e-service quality and a summary of its main dimensions. E-service quality is understood as "the extent to which a website facilitates efficient and effective shopping, purchasing, and delivery of products and services" (Zeithaml et al., 2002, p. 363). This construct comprises (i) efficiency, as the ease and speed of accessing and using the website; (ii) fulfilment, as the extent to which the delivery promises and item availability of the site are accomplished; (iii) system availability, referring to the correct technical functioning of the website; and (iv) privacy, as the degree to which the site is safe and protects customer information (Parasuraman et al., 2005).
Nevertheless, studies about online food delivery providers are recent and scarce in marketing literature. Researchers have focused on the attitudes towards it (Cho, Bonn & Li, 2019; Yeo, Goh & Rezaei, 2017), intention to use (Alagoz & Hekimoglu, 2012; Okumus, Ali, Bilgihan & Ozturk, 2018; Yeo et al., 2017), adoption of ODPs (Okumus & Bilgihan, 2014), and final conversion (i.e., placing an online order) (Kapoor & Vij, 2018). All these studies analyse the pre-consumption stage. Instead, this work investigates customers who have already adopted the use of ODPs, have placed orders and have eaten the food, and analyses their satisfaction with the ODP. In this regard, Wang, Tseng, Wang, Shih and Chan (2019) studied satisfaction only with restaurant-owned apps, and the authors included mainly information systems (IS) variables as determinants. Alalwan (2020) included detailed functional aspects as precursors of ODP satisfaction. Suhartanto et al. (2019) proposed e-service quality and food quality as determinants of e-satisfaction. Macias et al. (2020) added personal aspects of delivery workers in the ODP context and explored spillover effects over restaurant brands. The present work differs from Macias et al. (2020) since this study analyses changes in the evaluation of e-satisfaction and its determinants, and changes in the structural relationship due to the COVID-19 lockdown, using a larger sample to capture the effect of the health emergency period. In addition, we provide a qualitative analysis of customer perceptions about the service of ODPs in times of COVID-19, which could bring new insights for further research on this topic.
Based on Oliver's (1999) definition of satisfaction, we define ODP satisfaction as a subjective assessment of experience with an ODP regarding the degree of fulfilment of prior expectations. The customer service encounter in the ODP context includes interaction with the platform/app (launching, searching, ordering, payment, waiting/tracking), interaction with the delivery worker, and food consumption. Concerning the platform, the variable that best describes its performance is e-service quality. The platform's adequate functioning in its several dimensions (efficiency, fulfilment, system availability, and privacy) should contribute to e-satisfaction; prior works in lodging websites (Jeon & Jeong, 2017) and ODPs (Macías et al., 2020; Suhartanto et al., 2019) showed this relationship. Therefore, we proposed the following hypothesis:
* H1: e-service quality is positively associated with ODP satisfaction.
Furthermore, delivery workers may interact with the customer through text messaging or phone calls for delivery details, and during the personal delivery of products. Several studies have explained that the employees' appearance and behaviour influenced brand image formation in the' minds of customers (Pounders, Babin & Close, 2015; Warhurst & Nickson, 2007a, 2007b). In many industries, managers establish clothing, speech, and behaviour parameters to reflect brand image and values (Witz, Warhurst & Nickson, 2003). We define personal aspects of delivery workers (hereafter, personal aspects) as the combination of physical appearance, clothing, and manners when interacting with ODP customers. There is evidence that personal aspects influence how customers evaluate the service (Kim, 2014), restaurant experience (Wall & Berry, 2007), and satisfaction (Alhelalat et al., 2017; Macías et al., 2020). Hence, the second hypothesis is:
* H2: personal aspects are positively related to ODP satisfaction.
After platform and delivery worker interaction, customers eat food as a part of their experience from a process perspective. The degree of perceived food quality in the variety of menu, presentation, size, healthiness, taste, freshness, and food temperature, contribute to customer experience in restaurants (Han & Hyun, 2017; Liu & Jang, 2009; Namin, 2017; Namkung & Jang, 2007). Although the restaurant has prepared the food, the ODP controls the delivery time affecting its freshness; it has been shown that perceived food quality is positively associated to satisfaction with delivery service providers (Macías et al., 2020; Suhartanto et al., 2009). Based on these arguments and...
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