CONSUMER PERCEPTION TOWARDS ONLINE FOOD ORDERING PLATFORMS

Abstract

The world is changing minute by minute. New technologies are invented by people in every now and then. And these technologies are integrated into various devices and fields to help human life easier and convenient. Today if we have a smartphone and internet connection, we can do whatever we wish to do and we can buy whatever we see on the web. It could get delivered into our doorstep within a few days depending upon where it is coming from. This technological disruption has also happened in food market as well. When the e-commerce businesses started, we could buy any grocery items online and it could get delivered with in a week or few days. But today those businesses grown into such a wide network that they can deliver items people order online within a day and even with in few hours. Online food delivery is based on this system. Where the food aggregator connects the consumer with the restaurants in their area. So, people can select the preferred food from their offered menu and the food will be delivered to the consumer’s door step within an hour without loosing the hotness of food. When this type of service was started there were only a few players in the market and the consumers had only a limited options available to choose from. But today there are number of food aggregators available namely Swiggy, Zomato, Food panda, Uber Eats, etc. and all of these players are different from each other in a way even though they provide the same service. Being different from your competitor is what helps them in standing out in the market. Whenever it comes to ordering food online, consumers look for various convenient factors. They look for how easy to use their services in the smartphone, what all payment options do they provide and how fast they can deliver the food onto the preferred location. The variety of food options available on the menu, options to choose from different restaurants and the condition of the packaging, all these factors affect consumer preferences. The demographic factors also have impact on consumer behaviour towards online food ordering. The age group of the consumer, their family income, their area of residence, gender and marital status also affect the decision making process. Through this research the researcher has considered and analysed all these factors which affects the consumer behaviour on buying food online and arrived at certain research findings.