1. Spoiling Customer Appetites: Online Food Delivery Service Failure Attribution and Repurchase Intent
- Author
-
Tittle, Derek
- Subjects
- Behavioral Sciences, Business Administration, Marketing, online food delivery, repurchase intention, service failure, restaurant, customer loyalty, e-commerce
- Abstract
Increasingly, consumers are ordering from local and chain restaurants using Online Food Delivery (OFD) services via websites and mobile phone applications (e.g., DoorDash, Grubhub, UberEats). This research investigates how repurchase intentions toward restaurants and OFD services differ when a service failure (i.e., a service encounter that fails to meet the customer’s expectations) occurs. Participants were asked about their repurchase intentions in an experimental design after being presented with one of three scenarios. Service failure attribution was placed on one of three agents: the OFD service, the OFD driver, or the restaurant. This study suggests that when the OFD service is at blame, repurchase intentions toward the restaurant are higher than the OFD service. When the OFD driver is to blame, there is no significant difference between the restaurant and OFD’s service repurchase intentions. However, when the restaurant is to blame, repurchase intentions remain higher for the restaurant than the OFD service. This result supports the notion that while OFD services take more of the blame from consumers for OFD service failures, restaurants are somewhat shielded. An ANCOVA analysis offers theoretical and managerial implications, both of which are discussed.
- Published
- 2021