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Are online food delivery systems Are online food

delivery
persuasive? The impact of pictures persuasive?
systems

and calorie information on

consumer behavior 457
Nefike Gunden, Cristian Morosan and Agnes DeFranco Received 16 July 2020
Revised 25 August 2020
Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management, 29 August 2020
University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA Accepted 30 August 2020

Abstract
Purpose – The study’s purpose was to examine the role of two main factors in the design of online food
delivery systems (OFDS) user interfaces: the display of pictures and calories – on consumers’ attitudes toward
online food delivery systems, intentions to use such systems, spending on a food item and tipping behavior.
Design/methodology/approach – The study is grounded in the elaboration likelihood model. A 2 3 2
randomized post-test only between-subjects experimental design manipulated the types of pictures (food item
only vs consumers eating a food item) and calorie information display style (numbers vs activity symbols) to
determine whether they influence consumers’ attitudes, intentions to purchase, spending and tipping
behaviors.
Findings – The results show that the calorie display style influences consumers’ intentions to use such
systems and consumers’ tipping behaviors toward the delivery driver. It was also found that the type of picture
shown to consumers influences their intentions to purchase through ODFS, such that pictures of consumers
enjoying a product is more effective in stimulating intentions to purchase than pictures containing only the
food items.
Research limitations/implications – This study advances the current knowledge on web design for
restaurants wishing to distribute via online food delivery systems. Moreover, this study extends the literature
on persuasion in online environments by focusing on foodservice – an area that only recently has undergone
substantial distribution online. Finally, this study advances the literature on tipping behavior.
Practical implications – This study provides several contributions for both restaurants and online food
delivery system designers. Specifically, it illustrates exactly how specific elements in the design of the web
interface and the message targeted at consumers influence consumers’ behavior. Most importantly, this study
provides insight into tipping behaviors for the delivery driver. This is important because the delivery driver is
an important participant in the new value chain of restaurant delivery.
Originality/value – As the first study to develop an experiment that tests these important design conditions,
this study offers several critical theoretical and practical implications. This study is the first attempt to examine
various ways to present persuasive information in an OFDS in order to stimulate consumers’ behaviors.
Moreover, this study illustrates that the use of website design that enhance social presence is critical to website
effectiveness in OFDS.
Keywords Online food delivery systems, Persuasion, Attitudes, Intentions, Electronic commerce,
Food calories
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Online food delivery systems (OFDS) have grown in popularity and are attracting an
increasing number of customers. With revenues exceeding $715 million in the US in 2019 and
a forecast approaching $1 billion in 2023, OFDS (or platform-to-consumer) delivery (Statista,
2019) is likely to become an established branch of hospitality. In line with the latest trends in
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism
consumer behavior, such systems feature multiple options for finding a specific restaurant, a Insights
specific dish, and customizing a dish or its delivery options (DoorDash, 2018). OFDS are Vol. 4 No. 4, 2021
pp. 457-472
designed for consumers to complete food-related tasks (e.g. be able to pay online or ask for © Emerald Publishing Limited
2514-9792
carryout or delivery), which motivates them to satisfy their hunger needs without dining at a DOI 10.1108/JHTI-07-2020-0127
JHTI restaurant. Such systems are built on the same principles as the retail websites, where
4,4 consumers check out their purchases from the website as they complete the task. In OFDS,
consumers search for food items when they are ready to purchase by navigating through a
variety of online platforms (e.g. websites and mobile applications). Such systems provide an
online menu, including a description of food items with appealing pictures, which may
influence consumers’ purchasing behaviors. They are designed to offer visual cues, including
colors, fonts, graphics and pictures that are associated with consumers’ engagement (Kapoor
458 and Vij, 2018) and social presence.
One of the most important facilitators of electronic commerce – social presence – is
referred to as the degree of perceived human contact in online platforms (Ye et al., 2019).
Consumers’ behaviors tend to change as they perceive human interaction in online contexts
by adding rich text content, personalized greetings, and consumer pictures (Cyr et al., 2009).
The social presence and its effect on the consumers’ food purchasing behaviors have been
discussed in the marketing literature (Poor et al., 2013). Yet, its effect on consumers’ behaviors
in hospitality is very limited. Recent literature on social presence in hospitality have
advanced the idea that social presence could be a driving factor of consumers’ behaviors
while completing a purchasing task. However, there is no study that has examined the impact
of social presence elements such as pictures of consumers eating food on consumers’
behaviors in the OFDS context, marking this as the first research gap.
In general, OFDS include utilitarian elements of user interface design (e.g. search,
customization engine). However, at the time of this study, OFDS do not generally feature
substantial hedonic design elements (e.g. rich text, pictures, fun ways of presenting
information, playful elements) (Cyr et al., 2009). Yet, such elements could stimulate critical
customer behaviors such as involvement (Santosa et al., 2005), trust (Flavian et al., 2006),
satisfaction (Kim and Benbasat, 2006), or loyalty (Flavian et al., 2006). However, given the lack
of research on these platforms, it remains unknown whether such elements influence
consumers’ behaviors on OFDS. As this important aspect of research has not been elucidated
yet, we can consider this a second important research gap. However, in the OFDS
environments, the understanding by academics and practitioners of the role of the hedonic
elements in consumers’ behaviors may improve food purchasing tasks in OFDS
environments. In addition, such improvements in the task completion can result in
superior value being offered to consumers. Addressing the two research gaps
simultaneously, this study’s goal is to examine the role of hedonic design elements on
consumers’ outcomes, namely, attitudes, intentions, spending amount, and tipping. To
accomplish its goal, this study is guided by two specific objectives: to examine the impact on
consumers’ behaviors of: (1) using pictures of a food item vs a picture of consumers eating a
food item, and (2) using a calorie information display style where calories are represented as
numbers vs. as activity symbols. This study is grounded in the Elaboration Likelihood Model
(ELM) of persuasion (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986a, b) and related literature to provide the
understanding of consumers’ behavior in the OFDS context.

Review of literature
Theoretical foundations
The ELM provides a general framework that explains persuasion based on a dual processing
framework (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986a, b). Persuasion is defined as an individual’s change of
attitude that can be based on communication (e.g. given message) (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986a, b).
Attitudes are consistent behavioral responses toward a stimulus (Kotler et al., 2016) and have
been used very extensively in the marketing and information technology literature.
Consumers’ attitudes are important because they are direct antecedents of intentions to
perform a certain target behavior (Kotler et al., 2016). Intentions represent consumers’
responses (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) and have been used as surrogate measures of behaviors
in a vast amount of studies as they (1) can predict actual behavior and (2) because the actual Are online food
behavior is difficult to measure in most consumer research studies (Venkatesh et al., 2003). delivery
Moreover, researchers in business disciplines such as hospitality and tourism have been
focusing on researching specific behaviors. Specifically, consumers’ behaviors that are
systems
responsible for economic impact or revenues for firms have been especially important. One of persuasive?
these behaviors is consumer spending, which reflects the total amount of money spent by a
consumer on a certain advertised product (Kotler et al., 2016).
The ELM is considered an appropriate model in order to investigate how consumers’ 459
attitudes are influenced as they process various information based on the level of cognitive
efforts (Xu and Huang, 2019). It is chosen as a primary theoretical framework for this study
due to two main reasons: (1) it has been proposed to understand key routes – peripheral and
central routes, of the persuasion process in the online context (Cyr et al., 2018), and (2) it
captures consumers’ changes in attitude by focusing on the effectiveness of the peripheral
cues in the restaurant context (Kang and Namkung, 2019). Based on the ELM theory, the goal
of this study required the design of a theoretical framework that incorporated peripheral cues
to investigate their impact on consumers’ behaviors in the OFDS context.
ELM proposes two routes to persuasion – central route and peripheral route. In the central
route, the persuasion occurs as a result of an individual’s thoughtful consideration of the
presented information (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986a, b), which requires time and effort in
information processing (Zhou et al., 2016). In the marketing literature, central route
processing is associated with the quality of arguments and product involvement, which lead
to a change in attitude (Chong et al., 2018). The quality of the arguments, such as the content
of the information, plays an important role in changing attitudes toward products and
purchasing behaviors (Cheng and Ho, 2015). The peripheral route processing requires less
cognitive effort to elaborate on the given message and is triggered by peripheral cues
(e.g. number of arguments, argument strength) (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986a, b). Further, in the
peripheral route processing, consumers are likely to rely on peripheral cues (e.g. background
music, information source, website format, etc.) which are not relevant to the main content of
the given message (Xu and Huang, 2019).
ELM has been used as a theoretical foundation of how users elaborate on the particular
message presented in different contexts, including hospitality and tourism (Atwood and
Morosan, 2015; Xu and Huang, 2019). For example, consumers are involved in information
processing based on dual-process models of persuasion (e.g. central and peripheral route),
which lead them to modify their restaurant selections (Hlee et al., 2019). This model has also
been expanded to different studies to explore the factors that influence beyond consumers’
attitude change, such as purchasing intentions (Kang and Namkung, 2019) and travel decisions
(Tseng and Wang, 2016). Consumers are influenced by information processed via both
information processing routes, which result in changes in consumers’ behaviors (Kang and
Namkung, 2019). Consumers may have different abilities to process the given information
whereas ELM explains how the information processing influence their attitudes and behaviors.
In this study, pictures and calorie information presentation styles are considered peripheral
cues, which influence consumers’ processing of information and their subsequent behaviors.

Menu labeling in OFDS

The foodservice industry has begun to promote healthy food options more extensively in
recent years (Nadareyshvili, 2019). The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires
restaurants to disclose their nutritional information, including calorie information, on their
menus (FDA, 2017). Some OFDS disclose each food item’s nutritional information on their
website content (GrubHub, 2018). This is critical, as nutritional information influences
consumers’ food choices (Hwang and Lin, 2010). However, the calorie information presented
as numbers – the common way of presenting nutritional information – may not be enough to
JHTI change consumers’ purchasing behaviors (Dowray et al., 2013). For instance, consumers may
4,4 not realize the amount of physical exercise needed to burn the equivalent calories when
calorie information is presented as numbers (Dowray et al., 2013). Thus, alternative ways of
displaying nutritional information (e.g. activity symbols) have been proposed to examine
their effects on consumers’ food item selections (Lee and Thompson, 2016).
In OFDS, the consumers may prefer to utilize such systems depending on different factors
(e.g. convenience, easy to utilize, etc.) (Gunden et al., 2020). For instance, consumers tend to
460 purchase food items when they spend minimal effort by using such systems. With the rapid
growth of OFDS, the design elements (e.g. detailed product information including images,
fonts, animations, consumers’ reviews, and layouts) have been improved to influence
consumers. In the literature, such elements are considered peripheral cues and require low
effort to process in the online context (Cyr et al., 2018). This study follows the same logic and
represents calorie information as peripheral cues when investigating its impact on
consumers’ behaviors in the OFDS context.

Images in OFDS
Menu design has become an important instrument to maintain favorable consumer outcomes
in the restaurant industry (e.g. attitudes toward the brand, intentions) (Hou et al., 2017). The
restaurant industry has been using pictures of food items to enhance consumers’ attitudes
and purchasing intentions (Chen et al., 2020). Consumers are likely to purchase more food
items when pictures are presented to them on the menu (Hou et al., 2017). The combination of
pictures with a verbal script can influence changes in consumers’ information processing and
product involvement (Wyer et al., 2008). Similarly, the presence of pictures on the menu is
considered an effective way to increase consumer attention, which results in enhanced
consumers’ purchasing intentions (Hou et al., 2017).
By design, consumers experience lower human interaction in online contexts due to the
absence of face-to-face communication. A picture of the consumer eating food items may play
an important role in shaping consumers’ food purchases (Poor et al., 2013). Similarly,
consumers’ desires to purchase a food item are influenced by presenting consumption-related
pictures (including consumers with pictures of food items) (Barthomeuf et al., 2009). By
design, OFDS contain broad information about food items from a variety of restaurants,
including pictures and graphics. Consumers are able to see the pictures of food items that
allow them to explore the presented menu. Such pictures help consumers recall the particular
food items on the menu (Nadareyshvili, 2019). In addition, social presence – including a
consumer picture – may enhance online food purchasing tasks which may further affect
consumers’ behaviors. Thus, consumers may find consumption-related pictures appealing in
the OFDS. As a result, it is possible that displaying a picture of consumers eating might
enhance consumers’ attitudes toward OFDS. In this study, the pictures (e.g. food pictures and
a picture of consumers eating food items) are guiding consumers to peripheral route
processing and expected to have an effect on consumers’ behaviors in OFDS scenarios.

Role of pictures
Social presence is defined as an ongoing personal interaction in face-to-face communications
(Gefen and Straub, 2003). In online environments, social presence is perceived as the
psychological connection with website users that creates a feeling of human contact by
embedding various website features such as rich text and pictures (Cyr et al., 2007). Moreover,
the inclusion of pictures of consumers helped consumers to perceive a high social presence
(Hassanein and Head, 2007). In the hospitality context, social presence (e.g. video or audio of
consumers) is considered a driving factor of consumers’ purchasing behavior in peer-to-peer
accommodation platforms (Ye et al., 2019).
 In the online contexts, having food pictures with consumers may change consumers’ Are online food
expectations in online food ordering tasks, and it can affect consumers’ decision-making delivery
process regarding restaurant choices (Xu and Huang, 2019). In OFDS contexts, the system
allows consumers to engage with appealing layouts (e.g. pictures, colors, and descriptions),
systems
which further influence consumers’ behaviors. In addition, the consumers’ attitude toward persuasive?
OFDS may be enhanced by adding a picture of consumers eating specific food items
(Nadareyshvili, 2019). The presence of appealing food pictures may play a role in consumers’
decision-making process and attitude changes in the OFDS contexts. Thus, in this context, it 461
is expected that there might be an impact of consumption-related pictures on consumers’
behaviors in OFDS. Therefore, the following hypotheses were developed.
H1a. Pictures presented on OFDS enhance consumers’ attitudes toward OFDS.
H1b. Pictures presented on OFDS enhance consumers’ intentions to purchase
through OFDS.
H1c. Pictures presented on OFDS enhance consumers’ spending in OFDS.
H1d. Pictures presented on OFDS enhance consumers’ tipping behaviors in OFDS.

Role of presenting information in an innovative way

Website design contains various characteristics such as colors and shapes, which
influence consumers’ website use, and purchasing experience (Cyr et al., 2010). Likewise,
nutritional information (calorie, protein, sugar, etc.) that is added to the online menu may
lead consumers to eat healthy (Okumus et al., 2018). With the new labeling regulations, the
restaurant operators are mandated to add calorie information in their online menu (Beans,
2016). However, consumers may have different levels of processing of the nutritional
information in the food purchasing process (Dowray et al., 2013). Even though the
information is shown explicitly, consumers make their food selections based on their
cravings (or desires), which challenges consumers’ attention to the nutritional information
provided (Dowray et al., 2013). Therefore, the food industry puts an effort to improve the
way of displaying nutritional information on packages of food pictures (Mozaffarian and
Shangguan, 2019).
The simple way of presenting calorie information had little effect on consumers’ food
orders in the restaurant context (Court, 2018). Moreover, the restaurants have started making
changes related to displaying nutritional information on their menus to enhance consumers’
attention toward such information. The literature has discussed the effect of nutritional
information on consumers’ intentions to select food items by presenting the nutritional
information as physical symbols (e.g. running or walking) (Lee and Thompson, 2016). While
the restaurants disclose the nutritional information on menus, OFDS can be an effective
platform for displaying such information. In addition, OFDS may offer this type of
information by providing visual support (e.g. pictures, graphics, or symbols), which might
affect consumers’ online food purchasing tasks. Although the effect of nutritional
information on consumers’ behaviors has been discussed in the literature, including
hospitality (Jeong et al., 2019), there are not many studies focused on how such information
could affect consumers’ behaviors in the OFDS environments. Therefore, the current study
predicts that displaying calorie information, including activity symbols, may affect
consumers’ behaviors in OFDS.
H2a. Presenting calorie information on OFDS influences consumers’ attitudes
toward OFDS.
H2b. Presenting calorie information on OFDS influences consumers’ intentions to
purchase through OFDS.
JHTI H2c. Presenting calorie information on OFDS influences consumers’ spending in OFDS.
4,4 H2d. Presenting calorie information on OFDS influences consumers’ tipping behaviors
in OFDS.

Methodology
462 Development of measures
An online questionnaire was developed based on established scales found in the published
literature (Venkatesh et al., 2003; Sun et al., 2020). The scale for attitudes (4 items) was adapted
from Sun et al. (2020). The items were assessed on five-point semantic differential scale.
Intentions to purchase the food item were measured using 3 items adapted from Venkatesh
et al. (2003). These items were rated using Likert-scale items, ranging from 1 (Strongly
Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree). The respondents’ spending for the displayed food item was
measured on a slider scale ranging from $1 to $150. Tipping behavior (for restaurant and
delivery driver) was also measures as a slider, ranging from 0% to 50%. To ensure correct
measurement of variables, the slider scales also presented a type-in box where the
respondents can type values that could be located outside the range of the slider.

Procedure
To test the hypotheses of this study, a 2 3 2 randomized post-test only between-subjects
experimental design manipulated between-subjects experiment was conducted. The
independent variables were (1) “Pictures,” with the following conditions: presentation of
pictures of a food item only (condition A) vs customers eating a food item (condition B) and
(2) “Calorie information” with the following conditions, displaying calorie information in
numbers (condition 1) vs activity symbols (e.g. walking, running) presenting the time
necessary to consume the calories corresponding to the food item presented (condition 2).
The respondents were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental cells, after which
they were asked a series of items reflecting the manipulation checks and the dependent
variables.
The experimental conditions were designed based on the existing literature (e.g. Atwood
and Morosan, 2015). The conditions illustrated a fictional screen that presented the four
versions of the experimental conditions. Each respondent was assigned to an experimental
condition, which showed a customized layout of a chicken Sandwich dish that includes the
manipulated design elements (e.g. picture of only the food item vs. a picture of consumers
eating the food item, and calorie information as numbers vs. activity symbols). The data
collection instrument concluded with brief behavioral (e.g. experience using OFDS, dining
behavior) and demographic (e.g. gender, age, income) sections.
Data were collected in November 2019 from students enrolled in a large hospitality
management program in the US A total of 173 invitations were sent to the students’
email accounts. The population included all students enrolled in the programs of the
college where the data collection was conducted. The university where the data
collection took place is a large public university located in an urban area of the US,
therefore it reflects the characteristics of the typical users of OFDS. After removing the
responses containing missing values, 139 valid responses (response rate 5 83%) were
kept for further analysis.

Results
Preliminary analyses
One hundred and thirty-seven students indicated their gender, with 32.8% male respondents
and 67.2% female. 72.5% of respondents were in the age group 24 or younger and 73.3% of
respondents had an annual household income of less than $100,000 (Table 1). As illustrated in Are online food
Table 2, 33.1% of the respondents dined out over 9 times per month, or over 2 times per week. delivery
26.1% of respondents dined out 4 to 6 times a week. The respondents are very conservative in
how much they spent with the majority (54.3%) spending between $10.01 and $20.00 per
systems
person. While 2.9% or 4 respondents said they did not leave any tip, 43.9% did leave a tip of persuasive?
over 15%–22.5%. The mode (31.4% of the respondents) for tipping was at 20%, with 15% as
the second highest occurrence (27.7%). Finally, when ordering through OFDS, the party size
was mostly 3 or fewer people (56.6%) (Table 2) (see Table 3). 463

Hypothesis tests
After the manipulation check analysis was conducted (Table 4), a series of descriptive
analyses (Table 4) and analyses of variance (ANOVA) were conducted to test the hypotheses.
The results showed no significant main effect of pictures (F (1,139) 5 0.153, p 5 0.696) and the
calorie information display style (F (1,139) 5 0.634, p 5 0.427) on respondents’ attitudes toward
using OFDS, thus H1a and H2a were not supported (Table 5). There was a positive main effect
of picture type on consumers’ intention to purchase through OFDS (F (1,139) 5 5.672,
p 5 0.019), thus H1b was supported (Table 6). ANOVA results showed no significant main
effect of the calorie information display style on consumers’ intentions to purchase through
OFDS (F(1,139) 5 0.011, p 5 0.918); thus, H2b was not supported. The results showed that no
significant main effect of pictures (F (1,139) 5 0.817, p 5 0.368) and calorie information display
style (F (1,139) 5 1.234, p 5 0.269) on consumers’ spending while using OFDS (Table 7). Thus,
H1c and H2c were not supported.
In addition, the results did not show a significant main effect of pictures on consumers’
tipping to the restaurant while using OFDS (F (1,139) 5 3.527, p 5 0.063) or a significant effect
of calorie information display style using OFDS on tipping the restaurant (F (1,139) 5 0.433,
p 5 0.512) (Table 8). While there was no significant effect of the pictures or calorie information
display style on tipping behavior toward the restaurant, there was a significant effect of
calorie information display style on consumers’ tipping of the delivery driver. Specifically, it
was found that respondents seeing numeric calorie information (rather than symbols) being
used to present calorie information are likely to give a higher tip to the delivery driver

Characteristic Percentage (%)

Gender
Male 32.8
Female 67.2
Age
24 or younger 72.5
25–29 13.8
30–39 7.2
40–49 2.2
50–59 3.6
60 or above 0.7
Annual household income
$50,000 or less 48.9
$50,001–$100,000 24.4
$100,001–$150,000 11.9 Table 1.
$150,001–$200,000 4.4 Demographic
$200,000 or more 10.4 characteristics
JHTI Characteristic Percentage (%)
4,4
Dine in frequency per month
1–3 times 22.4
4–6 times 26.1
7–9 times 18.4
Over 9 times 33.1
464 Spending per person
$10.00 or less 4.4
$10.01–$20.00 54.3
$20.01–$30.00 22.8
Over $30.00 18.5
Tipping percentage
0–7.5% 10.2
7.6–15.0% 40.1
15.1–22.5% 43.9
Over 22.5% 5.8
Number of people in the party
3 or less 56.6
Table 2. 4–6 33.8
Behavioral 7–9 5.2
characteristics Over 9 4.4

Tip for
Calorie Tipping for delivery
Pictures information n Attitudes Intentions Spending restaurant driver

Food item only Numbers 35 4.09 (0.67) 3.29 (0.92) 5.80 (2.27) 5.18 (6.14) 10.23 (7.28)
Food item only Activity 35 4.08 (0.87) 3.37 (0.90) 6.98 (2.61) 3.36 (4.95) 7.76 (6.25)
symbols
Consumers Numbers 35 4.24 (0.71) 3.73 (0.72) 6.83 (3.16) 6.44 (6.82) 12.42 (8.50)
eating the food
item
Table 3. Consumers Activity 34 4.04 (0.98) 3.62 (0.88) 7.19 (6.76) 6.67 (7.88) 9.48 (5.49)
Descriptive statistics eating the food symbols
for the dependent item
variables Note(s): The values represent the means (standard deviations are shown in parentheses)

M Significance

Pictures 0.000***
Food item only 2.13
Consumers eating food item 3.29
Calorie information 0.002**
Table 4. Numbers 3.81
Manipulation check Activity symbols 3.35
results Note(s): ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01
(F (1,139) 5 4.616, p 5 0.034). Therefore, hypothesis H1d was not supported, while hypothesis Are online food
H2d was partially supported. The results also showed no significant interaction effect of delivery
pictures and calorie information display style on the consumers’ intentions to purchase (see
Table 9).
systems
persuasive?

Discussion 465
The current study applied a theoretical foundation based on the ELM to investigate the
impact of pictures and the style of presentation of calorie information on consumers’

Source MS F Significance

Pictures (P) 0.102 0.153 0.696 Table 5.

Calorie information (CI) 0.422 0.634 0.427 Two-way ANOVA
P 3 CI 0.320 0.480 0.489 statistics on attitudes
Error 0.665 toward OFDS

Source MS F Significance

Pictures (P) 4.182 5.672 0.019 Table 6.

Calorie information (CI) 0.008 0.011 0.918 Two-way ANOVA
P 3 CI 0.352 0.478 0.491 statistics on intentions
Error 0.737 to use OFDS

Source MS F Significance

Pictures (P) 13.655 0.817 0.368 Table 7.

Calorie information (CI) 20.618 1.234 0.269 Two-way ANOVA
P 3 CI 5.872 0.351 0.554 statistics on spending
Error 16.709 on OFDS

Source MS F Significance

Pictures (P) 149.221 3.527 0.063 Table 8.

Calorie information (CI) 18.330 0.433 0.512 Two-way ANOVA
P 3 CI 29.908 0.707 0.402 statistics on tipping the
Error 42.306 restaurant on OFDS

Source MS F Significance

Pictures (P) 120.189 2.422 0.122 Table 9.

Calorie information (CI) 229.065 4.616 0.034 Two-way ANOVA
P 3 CI 1.739 0.035 0.852 statistics on tipping the
Error 49.629 delivery driver
JHTI behaviors in OFDS. The current study found that consumers tend to purchase through OFDS
4,4 when a picture of consumers eating food items is presented. This finding suggests that
consumers’ purchasing intentions are formed based on the degree of perceived social
presence in OFDS context, even in a context where the simple process of online ordering is
provided. Therefore, in such conditions, a picture of consumers eating food items may help
consumers to better visualize particular products upon completing their food orders.
Displaying such pictures allowed consumers to experience a sense of human interaction
466 leading to changes in consumers’ behaviors, which is in line with the literature (Hassein and
Head, 2007). Therefore, presenting pictures may enhance consumers’ willingness to use such
systems in the future (Ye et al., 2019).
An unexpected finding is the non-significant effect of calories information display as
activity symbols on consumers’ intentions to purchase toward OFDS. This could be
explained by the fact that consumers may not be motivated by the calorie information in the
form of numbers vs activity symbols. For instance, consumers’ purchasing behaviors could
be motivated by other factors (e.g. the degree of hunger or consumers’ desire to eat particular
food item) before placing the order without considering the presented information online. In
addition, consumers may prefer to order food items through OFDS to take advantage of the
variety of product selections, customizations, and online payment options (Hirschberg et al.,
2016). This finding underscores that consumers may not be responsive to the presented
calorie information, and therefore, the presented calorie information may not be effective in
changing consumers’ purchasing behavior in OFDS.
The study also found that consumers who view the calorie information displayed as
numbers (as opposed to activity symbols) tend to give a higher tip to the delivery driver, while
the manner in which the food item is presented to them has no effect on such behavior. This
could be explained by the fact that consumers may replicate a real dining out experience
without an actual restaurant setting by having a clear understanding of the calories in the
food that they are about to consume. Moreover, consumers may be attracted by the direct (vs.
symbolic) meaning of the calorie information presented as numbers, which may shape the
way they perceive the new dining experience. Most importantly, and in contrast with the
existing literature, consumers could feel that the delivery driver is an important participant to
the success of an in–home dining episode, which justifies leaving a higher tip when
information about the food items is presented in a straightforward manner. It is surprising to
note the lack of a significant effect of pictures on the tip left for the delivery driver. While in
many cases the consumers ordering food are in contact with the delivery driver, there is no
influence of the way food item information is being presented.

Contributions
Theoretical contributions
This study sets out to examine the relationship between the effect or impact of hedonic
elements and consumers’ behaviors while using OFDS. As OFDS are attracting large
numbers of consumers, many consumers are using OFDS due to the convenience and choice.
Therefore, examining consumers’ behavioral changes in OFDS could be an initial step of
understanding the importance of hedonic elements in the online food ordering tasks. While
the literature (e.g. Cyr et al., 2018) explores the impact of hedonic elements on consumers’
behaviors in an online context, this study is the first investigation on the impact of hedonic
elements (e.g. displaying pictures or presenting calories in a fun way) on online food ordering
tasks. As consumers visit OFDS (e.g. purchasing food items from the menu), a particular
hedonic element might influence their ordering behavior, which occupies a unique position in
the literature. This finding fulfills a gap in the literature related to particular hedonic elements
that might trigger consumers’ behaviors (e.g. purchasing and tipping) in the traditional Are online food
experience. delivery
Second, the study contributes to the body of literature due to its methodology. While most
other studies on OFDS use surveys, a marked advantage of employing an experimental
systems
design is causality. In particular, with a 2 3 2 factorial design, this study was able to be persuasive?
carried out more efficiently, testing the effect the two conditions (the two peripheral cues) had
on the five dependent variables. This design also allows for testing any interaction effects.
While the results of this study showed no significant interaction effect of pictures and calorie 467
information display to on the consumers’ intentions to purchase and also attitudes toward
using OFDS, this is of particular importance because effects of an independent variable rarely
occur in isolation.
The third important contribution is applying an ELM-based framework to the context of
OFDS. This study provides evidence of peripheral routes on the persuasion process,
especially in the OFDS context, which results in changes in consumers’ behaviors when
ordering food online. While most adoption studies focused on consumers’ food purchasing
that reflects changes in consumers’ behaviors, this study reveals the persuasion process in
the food ordering tasks. The study occupies a unique position related to the significant effect
of a picture of consumers eating food items on their behaviors. Thus, this study advances the
hospitality literature into the area of online food purchasing by relying on ELM, which is
likely to uncover other changes in consumers’ behaviors in future studies.
The fourth contribution of this study is the advancement of knowledge regarding how
information presented on the purchasing portal of an e-commerce interface may change
consumers’ tipping behaviors in the OFDS context. Not surprisingly, the information
presented on the purchasing interface does not change consumers’ tipping behaviors toward
the restaurant. However, consumers seem to care about tipping the delivery driver.
Specifically, this study is opening a new stream of research that focuses on other stakeholders
in the online foodservice arena. As previous research in tipping behavior has investigated
tipping of servers in the restaurant context, this study advances the hospitality literature by
focusing on tipping of the delivery driver. While delivery has always been associated with
tipping in the US, tipping the delivery driver in the context of OFDS has a different
connotation, as the driver is typically a standalone contractor operating on behalf of a
distribution company (i.e. OFDS). Most importantly, through this finding, this study
illustrates that today’s consumers see the delivery system – of which the delivery driver is a
main part – as a distinct stakeholder of the foodservice environment.

Practical contributions
As the first study to examine the impact of hedonic elements on consumers’ behaviors in
OFDS, this result of this study brings important practical implications.
First, the results confirmed that consumers’ intentions to purchase through OFDS are
influenced by pictures of consumers eating food items. Consumers tend to purchase OFDS
when they see a picture of other people eating food items compared to simply a picture of the
food item. Therefore, restaurants having their menus on an OFDS should consider not only
having the menu item itself but with individuals of various demographic characteristics
enjoying the food time. A picture of people dining in a real restaurant can trigger a consumer’s
wish to be at that restaurant, just like the people in the picture, enjoying the food.
Second, as this study confirms that a picture of individuals eating food items helps to
enhance consumers’ intentions to purchase while using such systems, OFDS developers,
when working with their restaurant clients, should base their design on social presence,
which in turn could improve human interaction. OFDS developers need to have different
means to display how individuals are enjoying their food items on the menu, in order to assist
consumers to maintain in the OFDS to complete their food ordering tasks. For example,
JHTI having photos of individuals receiving the food items from a delivery driver, and dining in
4,4 their own home (but displaying the logo of the restaurant in the background or displaying the
packaging of the food order that has the restaurant logo) can also lead to more interests or a
larger total transaction in online food ordering.
Third, the results also showed that there was a significant effect of the calorie information
display on consumers’ tipping of the delivery driver. In today’s technologized hospitality
environment, with more food being ordered online and delivered, and regular ride-share
468 business having dropped due to people traveling less, the tips that these ride-share or delivery
personnel can earn is now more important as ever. As illustrated in Table 3, the condition
where consumers are presented with pictures of food and people and calorie information
displayed as numbers has an average tip of 12%, restaurants and OFDS developers can help
these delivery personnel to boost their earning possibility of getting a higher tip by including
calorie information on OFDS.

Limitations and directions for further research

As with any research, this study has its limitations, which can lead to implications for future
research. First, the sample of this study consists of students. While the students in this study
are attending a large public university located in a metropolitan area of the US, they have the
typical characteristics of OFDS users (e.g. young, technology savvy, etc.), a national study
where the respondents can mirror the population characteristics in age would be useful. In
addition, an international study can also offer invaluable insight for both foodservice
operators and OFDS designers to maximize customer use.
Second, in this study, only two peripheral route concepts, namely pictures of food and food
with people and calorie information, were examined. However, there could be more factors
that may affect the attitudes, intentions to purchase, spending amount, and tipping
percentages. One important factor that affects delivery could be distance. While consumers
may not mind driving an hour to a particular restaurant, whether they would be willing to
pay the same price for the food to be delivered to their home is a difference question.
Consumers would also want their food to travel safely, and that it would be just as good as if
the customers received the food from the kitchen to their dining room table at the restaurant.
In addition, while distance is important, the population density also goes hand in hand with
distance. Whether OFDS be more acceptable in densely populated cities rather than
sprawling neighborhoods in rural areas is another related variable that is worth study.
The current study also examined the type of food and the maximum amount that
customers are willing to spend. They both are also interesting factors to investigate as they
influence the use of OFDS. For example, due to delivery time, it might appear that fast food
items would be more attractive to customers than fine dining food. It also seems easier to
package Chinese food or pizza as to-go items as these two have been top delivery and take-
outs choices besides fast food. The restaurants need to understand what customers would
like to order and work on packaging and delivery so that menu items will still be as attractive
as presented in a restaurant. While one will wait to have a chocolate souffle for dessert at a
restaurant, one will probably not order a souffle to go. It is also worth continuing to examine
how much will customers be willing to spend. The price point is now not just the food and
perhaps that will include the “special delivery” which includes finishing the course at the
customers’ residence.
Research can also concentrate on the sale of alcoholic beverages. Alcoholic beverages
have higher profit margins than food items in general and this can help struggling food
services to net a bit more gross profits to cover all other costs. Depending on the local liquor
laws, most places will allow the sale of unopened bottles. Therefore, whether customers
would purchase wine, beer, or champagne to go along with their food is worth, and how much
will they be willing to pay for such items are all important questions that foodservice Are online food
operators and owners would like to know. Finally, COVID-19 pandemic forces the restaurant delivery
industry and even food outlets at hotels or other establishments to turn to online food delivery
systems since dine-in options alternate between closed and open. Therefore, examining the
systems
role of online food delivery systems during the pandemic can provide important insight to persuasive?
restaurant operators and web designers.
469
Conclusions
With the positive main effect of picture type on consumers’ intention to purchase through
OFDS, and a significant effect on tipping to the delivery driver when respondents see calorie
information displayed as numbers, a better understanding of OFDS use is beneficial to
academia and foodservice establishments. Therefore, OFDS may become more of a
permanent element of the fabric of dining sooner than later, and it means that research that
examines these systems is more important than ever.

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Corresponding author
Cristian Morosan can be contacted at: cmorosan@uh.edu

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