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Online food delivery (OFD), defined by Li et al. (2020), is a process through which food is ordered online, prepared, and delivered to the consumer. These services have seen a rise in demand over the past few years and are deemed to grow further in the coming years steadily. In numbers, the revenue generated by these platforms globally was estimated to be $50 billion in 2018 to 107.4 billion in 2019 and are projected to exceed to $200 billion by 2027 (Statista, 2020). These changes have helped the food markets innovate new ways as it was reaching its saturation point (Cho et al., 2019). The market in India is in its nascent stage, with only a handful of companies operating in the region. However, given the size of the country and its market, the revenue numbers have been on the rise touching $370 million in 2017 at an exponential rate, made possible due to the food-tech start-ups founded in the country like Zomato and Swiggy (The Economics Times, 2018; Technavio, 2019). With their market penetrating strategies, these companies have been able to catch the imagination of the Indian consumers. Food delivery is not a novel concept for Indian consumers. For example, Mumbai dabbawallas have been doing it since the 1890s (Baindur & Macário, 2013). However, as online food delivery gained popularity in the 2000s in other parts of the globe, in India, it was only introduced a decade ago (Pigatto et al., 2017). All these advancements have also resulted in the food buying behaviours of the consumers and are expected to be widespread in times to come (Ciro et al., 2020; Alalwan, 2020). Furthermore, as a result, compared to other counties like Indonesia (Elvandari et al., 2018; Suhartanto et al., 2019), Columbia (Correa et al., 2019), China (He et al., 2019), and many more, the literature suggests that are only a few studies that have been conducted in the country’s context for studying the main drivers of adoption of this technology (e.g., Bilgihan et al., 2014; Levin & Taylor, 2014; Vernhoef et al., 2015; Cho et al., 2019; Gunden et al., 2020; Yeo et al., 2017).
Hence, the current study focuses on the Indian market only. As demographics is one of the critical predictors for online buying behaviour (Li et al., 1999), the study focuses on the millennial consumers in the country who are considered to be tech-savvy and aware of these services better in comparison to other generations (Norum, 2003; Jackson et al., 2011; Wolburg & Pokrywczynski, 2001; Business.com, 2020). Furthermore, adoption of such technology is subject to favourability of the relationship between attitude and behavioural intention with complex decision-making process based on many factors like values, social and personal (Kimes, 2011; Littler & Melanthiou, 2006; Saarijärvi et al., 2014; Bisogni et al., 2005; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Hence, this study mainly focuses on four such factors that have been tested in previous studies, like hedonic and utilitarian motivations defining online food delivery characteristics (Nejati & Moghaddam, 2013; Yeo et al., 2017). Moreover, food belongs to a low-involvement product group making it a price-sensitive and time-saving action defined by price-saving and time-saving orientations (Saunders et al., 2012; Yeo et al., 2017). The proposed model is shown in figure 1.