Abstract
Mobile apps offering online to offline (O2O) services act as aggregators providing interface for delivery of required products and services at a preferred location. Despite offering multiple affordances, many O2O services have not diffused as anticipated, indicating the existence of consumer resistance towards them. One such example is that of food delivery apps (FDAs), which are experiencing resistance at both the pre-adoption and post-adoption stage. However, there are scarce empirical findings explicating the pre-and post-adoption barriers perceived to be associated with FDAs. The present study addresses this gap by utilising the Innovation Resistance Theory (IRT) and a convergent mixed-method study design to examine the barriers that existing FDA users face and how these impinge on their trust and valence of recommendation behaviour (positive and negative word of mouth). The study not only extends the classic IRT barriers to the FDA-context by identifying three key barriers (economic, efficiency, and experience) but also offers empirical evidence to support the negative association of barriers with trust and paradoxical recommendation behaviour by analysing data collected from 303 FDA users through Prolific. The findings also support the mediation effect of trust and the moderation effect of advertisement overload on the identified associations, making interesting theoretical and practical contributions.
Highlights
The wave of digitalisation unleashed in the first two decades of this millennium has supported the growth of mobile commerce (m-com merce) and related online to offline (O2O) services
There is no a priori finding in the food delivery applications (FDAs) context to indicate that barriers lead to negative word of mouth (NWOM), the existing evidence in both the hospitality and digital contexts provides us with a sufficient basis to speculate that the economic, efficiency, and experience barriers experienced by FDA users will aggravate their NWOM behaviour
Support for H1a confirms a negative relationship between economic barrier and trust, and support for H1c confirms a negative relationship between experience barrier and trust
Summary
The wave of digitalisation unleashed in the first two decades of this millennium has supported the growth of mobile commerce (m-com merce) and related online to offline (O2O) services. Despite the existing evidence in various digital contexts, of which FDAs are a part, the related literature has made limited attempts to understand the resistance of consumers and its consequences in the context of FDAs. Only one recent study (Kaur et al, 2020b) has examined the association of IRT barriers toward FDAs with intentions to use and word of mouth behaviour. A gap exists in the literature on FDAs regarding the examination of various outcomes of consumer resistance and the bar riers causing friction in consumers’ unhindered usage of FDAs. In addition, a review of the literature reveals that research on con sumer resistance to various services/products offered through digital platforms has focussed on examining the generic IRT barriers and their association with purchase/continuance intentions and consumer resis tance (e.g., Leong et al, 2020; Kaur et al, 2020c). Thereafter, we collected cross-sectional data through Prolific from 303 users of FDAs during the COVID-19 pandemic
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