Analyzing Decision Making Models Affect on Food Delivery Application Usage by Consumers

FURI Proposal, Fall 2017

Brie Harriel
Human Systems Engineering
Bmharriel@yahoo.com

Instructor
Dr. Scotty Craig Assistant Professor, Human Systems Engineering
scotty.craig@asu.edu
 Introduction
Technology continues to advance, and this inevitably effects the consumer market. A
particular market is the food industry and food delivery (Eun-Yong 2017). The advancement of
phones into smartphones has allowed for the usage of applications, and apps like Door Dash,
UberEats, and Favor are becoming increasingly popular in the food delivery market (Eun-Yong
2017). Why would someone decide to choose delivery, from somewhere like McDonalds, pay
more for delivery fees, instead of picking up the food themselves? There is a lot of decision
making models and heuristics that could help explain this. This can give better insight into
consumer behavior, how technology is shaping the way people shop, and ways the food industry
can capitalize on these advancements.
According to behavioral economics, people often may make financial decisions without
having a calculated or deliberate way for their decision making (Chung 2013). It can often be left
up to firms to decide a perfect balance of what the customer wants and what they need (Chung
2013). In Wendy Chung’s article on consumer behavior, she stated that consumers with higher
affluence (more money), capability, and risk tolerance, with high level of all three of these, are
okay with capital loss for more reward; they expect good service and don’t mind paying the
money to get it (Chung 2013). This would make sense for the use of food delivery apps as well.
If money isn’t an important factor being considered, and the person is looking for the desired
service of having food delivered to them, from virtually any restaurant, it would make sense why
some might find this more convenient than getting the food themselves.
In the research study based on perceived risk in online shopping and decision making, it
discusses how both rational and experiential systems affect consumer decision making (Chang
2012). Those who use more systematic processing will use all available information to critical
decision while those who use heuristic processing look at only a subset of the overall information
to decide (Chang 2012). In this study though it focused more on involvement (rational decision
making) and heuristics with the idea that people are more motivated to make more conscious
purchasing decisions if the purchase fulfills some need (Chang 2012). Under the subject of food,
this may explain food delivery app popularity because it brings readily prepared food, of your
choice, right to your door step. Another thing it discusses is the use of the availability heuristic
and how consumers will often continue online purchasing due to positive recall of favorable
purchases (Chang 2012). An example of this could be someone who paid a heavy fee for food
being delivered to their dinner party, though the fee was hefty, and they could have gotten the
food themselves for free, if the dinner party was successful, they may choose to do the food
delivery option another day. Heuristics save people mental effort and time and not every decision
needs time spent to determine a better option, though this may cause an issue in accuracy
(Gigerenzer 2011).
All of these discuss the aspects of decision making, including heuristics and the use of
cognitive processes, but they don’t fully examine it from the lens of a United States citizens
solely (in the case of Eun-Yong’s work, it was based on Korean citizen’s), and don’t fully focus
on the application of decision making models to the use food delivery apps. Different countries
have different lifestyles and ways in which technology is used in their everyday life, therefore
the application of findings in one place may not transfer to another and decision making, and
heuristics are a part in the researcher but there is a need to analyze how this affects some who
choose to use delivery apps and why others do not. The goal of this study is to analyze how
compensatory decision-making models and the availability heuristic effect an American
consumer’s decision to choose to use food delivery apps or not.

Methods
This examination would involve 50 participants, 25 of which use food delivery
applications frequently (a 1+ times a month) and those who use it occasionally (a few times a
year), along with 25 people who have never used it, or used it only once before. This will be
focused more towards the age group of 18-64, because that is the age group that does the most
online shopping in the U.S. (Statista 2017). It would involve having an open survey on a poll and
surveying website. This will allow for a multitude of responses with random sampling, along
with open questions to gauge the personal experience of each participant. The questions will
attempt to gauge if the participant uses the availability heuristic from past experiences and will
attempt to see if the compensatory model of decision making was used (if the participant
compensated unattractive factors of using a food delivery apps for attractive features)
The survey would include these open-ended questions:
 Do you use a food delivery application, and if so, how many times a year do you
do so?
 If you do not use a food delivery app, please explain why you do not
 Which food delivery application do you use?
 What are the features that you find positive about using a food delivery app?
What features do you consider negatives?
 Does cost factor into your choice of using a food delivery application? Explain
why or why not.
 When you have used a food delivery application has it been a pleasant experience
or a negative experience? Is this experience consistent every time you use this?
 What are your feelings on delivery fees?
 What makes you choose food delivery over picking up the food yourself/ vice
versa?
 If you could change one thing about food app deliveries, what would it be and
why?
 Etc.…
These questions, and possibly more, would help to see the reasons why someone may
make the decision to choose food delivery applications. Through coding the data and separating
the survey responses into the categories of food delivery app users and non-users, there would be
decent sample of individuals to analyze if the availability heuristic and compensatory models
give a reason to why some may choose to use food delivery over others. Specifically, what
would be looked for is a relation between food delivery app usage to the factor of money,
positive experiences, and explanations why they would choose to use these applications over
getting the food themselves.
Analysis
 I would expect to find that participants do often make this decision making based on the
compensatory model and the availability heuristic. This analyzation will help to give insight for
the food delivery industry on how to tailor their delivery systems to the consumer, and if they’re
a company or restaurant that does not do delivery, then maybe to take consideration into doing so
because of the large market of internet/ app users who are willing to pay extra money to have
food at their convenience.
.
 Works Cited
Chang, M., & Wu, W. (2012). Revisiting Perceived Risk in the Context of Online Shopping: An
Alternative Perspective of Decision-Making Styles. Psychology & Marketing, 29(5), 378-400.
doi:10.1002/mar.20528
EUN-YONG, L., SOO-BUM, L., & YU JUNG JENNIFER, J. (2017). FACTORS
INFLUENCING THE BEHAVIORAL INTENTION TO USE FOOD DELIVERY APPS. Social
Behavior & Personality: An International Journal, 45(9), 1461-1473.
Gigerenzer, G., & Gaissmaier, W. (2011). Heuristic Decision Making. Annual Review of
Psychology, 62, 451-482.
Chung, W. (2013). Consumer behaviour. Professional Adviser, A10
Statista. (2017). Age distribution of online buyers in the United States in 2012 and 2016.
www.statista.com/statistics/239428/number-of-us-online-shoppers-since-2010/. Accessed 2 Dec.
2017.

Timeline
Expected Completion Task
Week 1 Define hypothesis and expected results/ create
survey questions
Week 2-5 Gather survey data
Week 6-9 Code survey data
Week 10 Analyze coded data
Week 11 Create FURI poster with findings and results

Budget
Expense Cost
2 months of Surveymonkey.com subscription $62.00
Total: $62.00