Importance–performance and potential gain of food delivery apps: in view of the restaurant partner perspective

Nowadays, smartphones have evolved into the most prevalent method to grab information, advertise and optimize customer service (Liu et al., 2022a, b). The food industry is continuously developing its online services. Its future is expected to grow significantly due to online food delivery (OFD). IMARC expects revenue in this market to grow at 11.44% per year from 2022 to 2027 (IMARC, 2022). Moreover, Keeble et al. (2020) estimated that 15% of the population uses online food delivery applications (FDAs), contributing to 30% of restaurant meals eaten at home. FDAs are a new technological innovation that has caused substantial upheaval in the food and beverage sector (Tandon et al., 2021). This phenomenon occurs globally, including in Asia, China, India, Japan and South Korea (Roh and Park, 2019). Using FDAs, customers can order food at their desired time and location efficiently and effectively. In Indonesia, 21% of e-commerce users make transactions to fulfill their food and daily needs (Wahyudin and Nahar, 2020). FDAs provide more comprehensive and real-time information about seller profiles and the products offered to customers (Alalwan, 2020).

FDAs working as intermediaries or multivendors are required to maintain cross-side network effects (Melián-González, 2022; Kung and Zhong, 2017). As intermediaries, the FDA must simultaneously meet user expectations, namely, partners and consumers, to sustain their businesses. FDA providers must meet consumer needs and expectations and, at the same time, increase competition among partners (Ray et al., 2019). FDA attracts new potential users by understanding partner and consumer needs. Consumers' trust in the FDAs impacts their trust in restaurants, subsequently contributing to their purchase intention (Raza et al., 2022). Consequently, FDA providers should know customer value from the seller and consumer perspective. Innovations, environmental scanning and sensing capabilities and integrative capabilities are the ways to capture the value and become strong in facing future challenges (Helfat and Raubitschek, 2018). As development progresses, in the digitalization era, customer value creation may have undergone a shift where we begin to see customers as independent value creators outside of interactions with service providers (Holmqvist et al., 2020). Regarding the value, He and Zhang (2022) found that the varied value of the FDA drives FDA brand engagement. Additionally, Shah et al. (2022) demonstrated that simplicity of use, practicality, discount, menu, review and rating of restaurants directly impacted consumer satisfaction. Thus, FDA providers need to carefully evaluate service recovery measures since these approaches take effect in the case of service disappointments (Kaur et al., 2022).

Recently, research on OFD has shifted from website-based to online-to-offline, smartphone-based FDAs and drone-based food delivery (Shankar et al., 2022). Regarding smartphone-based food delivery apps, existing studies mostly concentrated on the perspectives of platform providers or consumers (Lee et al., 2019). Some of them discussed the stability of the FDA (Wang et al., 2019), consumer relations (Burlea-Schiopoiu et al., 2022; Ecker and Strüver, 2022; Gannon et al., 2022; Kaur et al., 2022), consumer intention (Pillai et al., 2022; Raza et al., 2022; Tandon et al., 2021), the courier of FDA (Parwez, 2022), economic gain (Alvarez-Palau et al., 2022) or even blockchain integrated IoT for food supply chain (Singh et al., 2023). Nonetheless, studies that discussed the FDA from partner perspectives remain limited. For instance, Lee et al. (2019) are concerned about the benefits of online shopping apps from the view of restaurants, as business partners of FDA. In addition, Sellappan and Shanmugam (2020) paid attention to the satisfaction of FDA service. They suggested FDA providers respect restaurant partner aspirations and should serve up “win-win” solutions.

This study has three main objectives: (1) determining the importance and performance levels of services provided by FDAs to restaurant partners, (2) identifying the potential gain index of the services provided by FDAs to restaurant partners and (3) exploring options to optimize the potential gain of FDAs from the perspective of restaurant partners. The research aims to enhance the understanding of the dynamics between FDAs and restaurant partners and provide valuable insights into optimize the services and relationships in the FDA ecosystem. To measure the importance and performance levels, the study employs the importance–performance analysis (IPA) method, which has been widely used in various fields. Such as tourism services (Chen et al., 2022; Guizzardi and Stacchini, 2017; Lankia et al., 2022; McKercher, 2018; Suárez-Rojas et al., 2023), transportation (Aghajanzadeh et al., 2022; Tuan et al., 2022) and foods and services (Kang et al., 2020; Mejia et al., 2022; Xu et al., 2022). However, no research has been found that applies the IPA method to food order delivery apps from the perspective of a business partner. Additionally, the study utilizes the potential gain in partner value (PGPV) method to assess the FDA's potential gain as a starting point to enhance FDA for business partners. PGPV is an extension of the potential gain in customer value (PGCV) idea that substitutes partner perspective value for customer value.

Customers usually search for their favorite sales partners, choose from available items and provide their shipping addresses (Pigatto et al., 2017). OFD is the ordering and delivery of food from various vendor partners via websites or apps. Internet provider growth and smartphone penetration have fueled various FDAs. The difference between OFD and FDA is that orders can be placed via internet-based websites in the case of OFD, but orders can only be placed via mobile apps in the case of FDAs. The services offered by various FDAs can be categorized as providing orders, monitoring, payments and tracking facilities, but they are not responsible for the actual food preparation (Pigatto et al., 2017). FDAs acting as intermediaries are required to maintain cross-side network effects (Kung and Zhong, 2017).

By having FDA apps on their smartphones, a consumer can search for restaurants nearby, look through the catalog and select and purchase their favorite menus without having to communicate with restaurant servers directly (Kapoor and Vij, 2018). Consumers can effortlessly order their daily foods from numerous restaurants at an appropriate moment and place (Alalwan, 2020). According to Shankar et al. (2022), customers gain numerous advantages from utilizing FDA, including convenience (Shah et al., 2022), sales and savings (Wang et al., 2020), ease of use (Hong et al., 2021), perceived usefulness (Troise et al., 2021) and getting information on upcoming new menus (Williams et al., 2020). In line with it, Sellappan and Shanmugam (2020) divided FDA into six dimensions: core function, business autonomy, order management, customer relationship management, synergic competitive strength and business term. Each dimension has a different feature, as shown in Table 1.

The significant popularity of FDAs, in developed and developing countries, is due to the support of adequate facilities to carry out fast and safe food delivery processes to customer doors and the enthusiasm of restaurant owners to increase revenue without increasing restaurant seating capacity (Xu, 2017; Xu and Huang, 2019). Restaurants can improve their menu and services in a valuable way by utilizing FDA, while consumers can order the menu without consuming much effort and time (Ray et al., 2019). In addition, Sjahroeddin (2018) and Yeo et al. (2017) divided FDAs into sellers themselves and multivendor apps. Examples of vendors providing their own FDA services are Pizza Hut, KFC and McDonald's. Multiseller apps in Indonesia include Go Food, Grab Food and Shopee Food. Furthermore, Foodpanda, Swiggy, Zomato and Uber Eats are a few multiseller FDA examples that operate in various countries (Lo et al., 2020).

Prior researchers argued that identifying and addressing users' common perceptions of the important factors of the FDA is critical (Alalwan, 2020; Cho et al., 2019; Okumus and Bilgihan, 2014; Yeo et al., 2017). Kapoor and Vij (2018) stated that the primary focus of food delivery services is to access various channels, including mobile apps. Users are attracted to innovative and efficient apps that make their lives easier, safer and less risky. Users' desire is driven by the features of mobile apps, which include order monitoring, user rating, customer feedback and so on. Those kinds of features are important in shaping users' positive attitudes toward FDAs.

IPA is one method that can be utilized to determine how business partners assess each feature of the FDA. Tzeng and Chang (2011) argued that IPA is quite accurate and significant in explaining the service quality of the food industry. The importance–performance chart is divided into four groups as follows:

• (1)

  Concentrate here

Features in area A are critical in developing products or services so it is given primary attention by management (Sever, 2015). Companies must concentrate on mobilizing their resources to improve their services to meet customer expectations.

• (2)

  Keep up the good work

This area presents major product or service strengths (Sever, 2015). Companies should maintain consistency in their performance and customer satisfaction.

• (3)

  Low priority

This is an area of mediocre or even low importance and performance. If some service types fall into this quadrant, then companies can improve after the services in quadrant A have reached customers' expectations.

• (4)

  Possible overkill

This is an area of low-level importance, but customer performance is considered very well. This area shows truly positive features, so they can be selected as optimal boundary points (Sever, 2015). That is companies must make resource-efficient in this area.

In the digital era, interactive platforms comprise artifacts, persons, processes and interfaces. To create value, digitalized interactive apps are dynamic configuration processes of tangible and intangible services (He and Zhang, 2022) from end to end of a series of actions (Perks et al., 2017). Value refers to the perceived customer preferences and performance evaluations of product features and consequences arising from using that facilitate the achievement of customer goals and objectives in usage situations (Woodruff, 1997). Episode value refers to one-time transactional value (Chan et al., 2010), whereas relationship value is captured from an interactive process with employees (Baumann and Le Meunier-FitzHugh, 2015). As Woodruff's concept indicates, the evaluation of objective success depends on the outcome when it is based on perceptions or experiences (Minerbo et al., 2021). As a result, perceived “value in exchange” or “promised value in use” earlier or at the time of an agreement signed represents all projected goal-related implications of a transaction for clients and vendors (Eggert et al., 2019).

As the perceived product or service value from the customer perspective, customer value can be defined in some ways (Zauner et al., 2015): (1) customer value refers to the subjectivity (or personal) of the customer, not the objectivity of the seller (Eggert and Ulaga, 2002); (2) customer value is a “feasibility” number, which is assigned to an object and allows comparison with other evaluations along a numerical continuum (Oliver, 2010); (3) customer value depends on the situation or context such as the ideas of (Woodall, 2003), so it is dynamic (Sánchez et al., 2006). Another hand, He and Zhang (2022) classified customer value into specific aspects such as product function (Keränen and Jalkala, 2013) and intangible assets such as reputation (Whitwell et al., 2007).

Understanding customer value contributes to competitive advantage. Competitive advantage can be achieved by creating superior value on perceived quality and price as desired by customers (Asgarpour et al., 2014). Furthermore, Graf and Maas (2008) divided customer value into perceived customer value (PCV) and desired customer value (DCV). PCV is conceptualized as a tradeoff between benefits and costs with a focus on the concrete performance characteristics of a product or service (Zeithaml, 1988). Sweeney provides a commonly accepted description of PCV by utilizing the consumption value theory and developing the PCV model, which is a measurement scale for consumers' perceptions of the value of products that comprises four value dimensions: value for money, performance, social and emotional. Additionally, the PCV model is somewhat adjusted for other goals, such as user-oriented product-service systems, by including the financial, functional, emotional and social value scales (Borg et al., 2020). Indeed, previous research has shown that PCV has a variety of relationship implications, such as trust, commitment and identity (Kandampully et al., 2015; So et al., 2014).

While DCV is conceptualized as part of the customer value system, DCV seeks to explain what needs, wants and values (dimensions) customers want to satisfy by purchasing or using particular products or services (Graf and Maas, 2008). Its emphasis is on conceptual value or objectives generated from specific performance parameters. Flint and Woodruff (2001) stated that knowing the reasons for DCV will assist marketers in predicting consumer preferences as well as a diagnostic instrument for investigating business partners. Moreover, providing unexpected benefits in customer satisfaction may delight consumers and strengthen their commitment to the company (Kim et al., 2021; Kim and Baker, 2020; Li and Fumagalli, 2022; Steinhoff and Palmatier, 2016). Indeed, Li and Fumagalli (2022) observed that providers could avoid providing consumer entitlement by generating delight promotions as one-time discounts or delivering great deals in a random pattern. Correspondingly, they show that providers may minimize the impact of entitlement on consumers' desires by providing consumers with various promotions.

To get a quantitative analysis for marketing strategy, this study applied the PGCV model, an advanced multivariate prediction model, or performance criteria. PGCV provides important performance to be evaluated visually or on a more sophisticated compact level. As a consequence, PGCV continues to be utilized by a few other researchers, such as Chen et al. (2004), Nugraha et al. (2019) and Septiani et al. (2020). The PGCV index for each feature depends on the achieved customer value (ACV) and ultimately desired customer values (UDCV). ACV is a value obtained from customers on a quality feature performance resulting from multiplying the final value obtained from a survey. While UDCV is the desired maximum value for consumers, UDCV is derived from the multiplication between the importance level value obtained by the highest possible performance level. The PGCV index describes the greatest value of potential gain for the customer; so the higher the PGCV index, the higher the customer's potential gain.

The sample of this study is the business of food and beverage providers who are partners of the FDA. Since there is no certain amount of FDA population that researchers may gather from linked parties, the method proposed by Lemeshow et al. (1994) is used to determine the number of samples. This method requires the necessary minimum number of samples to be 97. While in this study, from February to August 2021, 700 food and beverage (F&B) businesses in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, were contacted. The sample is selected using a purposive random sampling method, with the criteria that the business has been running for more than a year and is an active FDA partner. This method is adopted to ensure the researcher gets the proper sample. And there are only 208 out of 700 F&B businesses that participated in filling out the questionnaire.

Furthermore, selected samples are asked to provide assessments of the importance and performance of the FDA features through a questionnaire compiled by the previous researcher. The questionnaire consists of three parts, namely, a partner profile, a statement about the importance of the FDA features and a statement about the performance level of the FDA feature as stated in Table 1.

The profile of food delivery app partners can be seen in Table 2. Regarding gender, the number of male and female respondents was almost equal, namely 52 and 48%. The age of restaurant owners or managers is dominated by young and productive ages, 19–40 years, with a total percentage of 71%. Businesses run by FDA partners are relatively new, around 70%. And only 12% of FDA partners whose business has been going on for more than 15 years, meaning that their business already existed before the FDA was present and growing in Indonesia. In terms of the types of products sold, 70% of FDA partners provide food and drinks to their customers.

To ensure questionnaire validity and accuracy, validity and reliability tests are carried out with a 5% probability level. Based on the Pearson product–moment correlation test with a 5% probability level, the corrected item–total correlation on features, importance and performance features, all show numbers greater than the r-table (0.1361), so all statements in the questionnaire are considered valid. The reliability test also reveals good results where the coefficient value of Cronbach's alpha is higher than 0.7. Thus, all the collected data can be considered consistent. Table 3 and Table 4 display the results of the validity and reliability tests, respectively.

This study applied the IPA method to identify the importance and performance of FDA features, as follows:

• (1)

  Conformity level analysis

Conformity level is the result of the comparison of the company performance score with the company interest score where conformity level is used to determine the order of priority for improving the measured performance factors. The formula used is as follows:

Description: CLi = respondent conformity level

• Xi = performance level

• Yi = importance level

• (2)

  Cartesian diagram analysis

The relationship between performance and importance level can be visualized in a Cartesian diagram. This diagram consists of a two-dimensional graph with the x-axis representing “Performance” $and$ the y-axis representing “Importance” with scatter points plotteed into four quadrants to help gain insight for the analysis. Each plotted point is resulted from the intersection of $X¯1$ and $Y¯1$ as calculated by the following formula:

Description: $X=1$ = average of the performance

• $Y=1$ = average of the importance

• K = number of features that affect performance appraisal

In addition, to identify potential gains of the FDA from a business partner perspective, the PGCV theory is extended. The PGCV of FDAs is carried out to obtain customer value based on the importance and performance of FDA features. The PGCV index of each service feature is influenced by two factors adopted by Hom (1997), namely, ACV and UDCV. ACV is the result of multiplying the importance level value with the performance level value. While UDCV is the result of multiplying the importance level value with the highest performance level value, the PGCV is obtained by subtracting the UDCV value from ACV. It describes the priority customer value of each feature; the greater the PGCV index of a feature, the higher the PGCV by using FDA.

The most crucial success factor in adopting new technology is top management support. When a business decides to employ cutting-edge technology, top management makes the call (Singh et al., 2023). IPA can help management identify areas of priority features so that companies can maximize business potential by diverting resources to these features (O'Neill and Palmer, 2004). Separating importance and performance measures helps minimize compounding and regularity effects. Table 5 provides details of the assessment results from partners on FDA features.

In the aspect of importance, of the 21 features that have been assessed, twelve features have an average importance level value of 4.37 (Table 5). That is, 12 FDA features are considered important by FDA's partners to support their business. In terms of performance, 13 of the 21 features in existing FDAs are rated as very good by their business partners. However, checking per feature, among the 13 features with good performance, some are considered unimportant. Features that are regarded as important also have poor performance. For convenient analysis, vertical and horizontal axes are used, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Positioning the vertical and horizontal axes on the grid is a matter of judgment. The value of this approach lies in identifying relative, not absolute, importance and performance level. Given that the significance test is not performed in our study, distortions caused by minor violations of the interval scale assumption are unlikely to be serious (Martilla and Carvey, 1975). Analyzing the importance–performance chart systematically considers each feature in order of their relative importance and performance as follows:

• (1)

  Concentrate feature

These features are considered highly significant in FDAs; however, their performance remains under the expectation of partners. These features include competitive advantage, customer loyalty, online presence and a user's credit rating. This finding is consistent with the study of Sellappan and Shanmugam (2020) that competitive advantage is a feature that should be strengthened in performance. This also supports prior studies indicating that restaurants affiliated with the FDA can give strategic advantages in the context of competitiveness (Lindblom and Lindblom, 2017; SernYeo et al., 2017).

• (2)

  Good performance feature

These features focused are highly valued in FDAs, and their performance has exceeded the partner seller's expectations. Order clarity, credit transfer, customer augmentation, seller-led promotion, building customer loyalty, order data management, sales enhancement, reliable service, and promotion and offers are all included, meaning that FDA's developers should keep improving these performances as well as suggested by Sellappan and Shanmugam (2020). Furthermore, in the context of seller-led promotion, building customer loyalty, order data management, sales enhancement, reliable service, and promotion and offers, He et al. (2019) discovered that restaurants that provide delivery services may disperse in distance surrounding them, concerning to their operational coverage (Gao and Su, 2017).

• (3)

  Low-priority feature

Including these features is presumed unimportant, and its performance misses the mark of partners' expectations. Owning customer data, revenue sharing, stable terms and conditions, acceptable terms and conditions, and customer interface are all covered in this subject. This finding is also aligned with the result of Sellappan and Shanmugam (2020) concerning a premise that restaurant partners placed a low value on consumer data ownership or the presence of a low influence as well. Consequently, these features can be skipped proportionally. Better for FDA's developer to focus more on the “concentrate features”.

• (4)

  Basic feature

These features are considered particularly unimportant, their performance is highly rated. It includes features of delivery, order taking and timely service. FDA's developers must maintain intensively the performance of delivery and timely service. This is in line with a study of Correa et al. (2019), He et al. (2019) and Sellappan and Shanmugam (2020). Additionally, prior studies showed that technology-based ordering might shorten mealtimes, increase revenue per order and improve productivity levels by 11% (Sellappan and Shanmugam, 2020). The developer should concentrate on having a resource-efficient strategy in maintaining delivery, order taking and timely service of the FDA.

To identify potential gains of the FDA concerning the business partner perspective, this study adopted the PGCV theory with an extension to put the business partner perspective as a substitute for customer value. Herewith, we replace it with a potential gain for partner value (PGPV). This measures the potential gain provided by the FDA from the view of business partners’ perspective. The list of the potential gains is shown in Table 6, composed in its priority order. The greater the PGPV index, the higher the potential gain for the business partner.

Within Table 6, the PGPV index can be categorized into three parts: high, medium and low levels. A high PGPV index implies that FDA partners perceive the feature as having the greatest potential gain. The feature offers PGPV index indicates that FDA partners consider the feature offers no significant potential gain to their business. However, this study only found features with high and medium levels of the PGPV index. The detailed description is as follows:

• (1)

  High potential gain (PGPV index above 3.5 points)

As listed in Table 6, features in this category include owning customer data, revenue sharing, competitive advantage, stable terms and conditions, customer interface, acceptable terms and conditions, building customer loyalty, online presence, user credit rating, promotion and offers, delivery service and sales enhancement. Is known also that FDA is comprised of electronic data (Peter and Stephanie, 2013) and provides a continuous flow of interaction (Tiwana et al., 2010) among numerous users and performs a range of objectives (Michalik et al., 2018). On the other, although in this study feature of owning customer data falls into a low priority, however, it is the most important value for FDA's partners according to Ruddell et al. (2020) who stated that gaining access to customer data enables innovators to explore and develop new products or services. Additionally, Ruddell et al. (2020) ensured to release securely such data for the public interest and did not strike a balance between competing utility and privacy values.

The next interesting high-potential gain is revenue sharing, competitive advantage, customer interface, customer loyalty, and promotion and offers. These findings align with Matsuoka (2022) where revenue sharing is upon perceived fairness (Lastner et al., 2019; Meatchi et al., 2021) and will improve customer loyalty. On the other hand, the featured interface was also crucial for creating customer loyalty (Liu et al., 2022). In the context of competitiveness, it is congruent with Raguseo et al. (2021) that IT expenditures boosting product effectiveness have a substantial influence on competitive advantage than those affecting operational efficiencies. Joining FDAs may provide a competitive advantage for business partners. Therefore, FDA developers should think about giving customized offers that can figure out customer seeking and purchase behavior (Tandon et al., 2021). Partners might integrate their business resources to be more efficient in distributing and maximizing the usage of the product in the digital era (Mkansi and Nsakanda, 2021). Moreover, because most business partners do not have an online channel, FDA enables a vast scope of promotion for their products and services. Its competitiveness could also improve by decreasing boundaries between large and small enterprises (Faria et al., 2019). Furthermore, FDA providers need to clearly distinguish respectively tactical pricing (revenue) and strategic pricing (positioning) as a promotion and offering strategy. FDA providers should realize that its function is tactical instead of strategic pricing, and the strategy may have a detrimental impact on partner relationships (Matsuoka, 2022).

Other high potential gains of the FDA for business partners' perspective are customer interface, online presence, user credit rating, delivery service and sales enhancement. The FDA's customer interface is a part of the customer experience. Understanding a consumer's journey (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016), which includes the involvement of partners and environmental influencers (Chandler and Lusch, 2015), is a crucial concern when evaluating the customer experience. Several user touchpoints may be recognized throughout the customer journey (Baxendale et al., 2015; De Haan et al., 2015). Prepurchase is the initial stage of the customer journey, which includes all customer experiences with the brand, such as need identification, exploration and evaluation (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). At this point, the FDA customer interface can assist customers to find their specific expectations and search for appropriate product offers (Roggeveen and Sethuraman, 2020). The apps should provoke positive emotions by presenting user experiences with easiness, attractive, fascinating, playful, interesting and logical (Molinillo et al., 2022).

The credit rating feature is important in representing their reputation to be available online. This confirms the opinion of Banerjee et al. (2017) that positive online ratings from other customers have a large impact on the restaurant's online reputation. It can strengthen marketing and service strategies so that FDA partners can use forecasting analytics to increase customer satisfaction (Kim et al., 2022) and sales enhancement (Li et al., 2019). Regarding the linkage between credit rating and sales enhancement concerns, previous scholars such as Liu et al. (2022) and Wang et al. (2022) suggested when platforms show online reviews, they should firmly regulate the authenticity of reviews. Therefore, FDA and those restaurants should be in partnership to minimize the effect of fake reviews with limited review authenticity on sales.

Another interesting feature here is the delivery service. This finding supports the perspective of Park and Bae (2020) where the delivery and service directly affected customer satisfaction in such a way as courier friendliness, delivery speed and accuracy. Since food delivery services are on-demand, customers expect immediate service and are reluctant to long waits (Melián-González, 2022; Taylor, 2018). Similarly, according to Tsai et al. (2023), the most significant criterion for FDA consumers is convenience, which includes delivery service (Yeo et al., 2017). Customers have a greater probability to use the FDA if the delivery service time is not extended (Li and Liang, 2022).

• (2)

  Medium potential gain (PGPV index between 2.0 and 3.5 points)

A medium PGPV index implies that FDA partners perceive these features as having considerable potential gain for their business. The features include order taking, reliable service, customer augmentation, order data management, timely service, seller-led promotion, order scheduling, credit transfer and order clarity. Order taking is one of the interesting features of this study. It is well known that couriers who take and deliver customer orders are third-party employees (Melián-González, 2022), and they are not employees of FDA partners. Therefore, the performance of this courier is considered not to have a significant impact on the partner's business performance. Despite their critical position in order delivery services, FDA partners perceive the order taking feature to be modest. This perception is related to favorable employee attitudes and performance (Melián-González, 2022; Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002).

Regarding reliable service, including order data management, timely service and order clarity. This finding has similarities with previous studies such as Chen et al. (2022), Kaur et al. (2020), Zhao and Bacao (2020) who believed that reliability (and its derived features) had a potential gain in utilizing FDA. Reliability is referred to the ability to provide the services promised accurately and appropriately (He et al., 2019; Seiter and Weger, 2020) within the time limit set (Niemi et al., 2020). Reliable service, order data management, timely service and order clarity have a positive impact on customer satisfaction (Cheng et al., 2021). Shankar et al. (2022) demonstrated that delivery time, which includes delivery speed, shapes the willingness to purchase food through FDA. Nevertheless, FDA's partners assess that the potential gain from the reliability feature (and its derivatives) was not extremely meaningful; hence, they score it only at a moderate level.

Finally, this study discusses the seller-led promotion feature, which is aligned with Wang and Chen (2022). Restaurants can delight customers by maintaining the promotion context appropriately. When customers have poor online promotion concerns, restaurants can offer them relevant promotions based on their previous shopping histories to provide a more robust promotion. Meanwhile, when customers have intense concerns, restaurants can organize a variety of promotional events to “disrupt” their shopping behavior to some extent. Since restaurateurs have a limited technical understanding (Lee et al., 2019) of the seller-led promotion feature, they tend to utilize default platforms rather than customization.

Theoretically, this study complements prior research on FDA from the standpoint of a business partner. Previously known, studies focused solely on app development, buyer or interaction between applications and buyers. The authors expand the concept of PGCV by exchanging customer value with partner value perspective; thereby, the model is called a PGPV. The PGPV analysis is directed to identify features with high potential gains for business partners of the FDA. FDA features with high potential gain include customer data ownership, profit sharing, competitive advantage, customer interfaces and building customer loyalty. These results reinforce the theory that has been put forward by previous researchers. For instance, access to customer data enables innovation and development of new products or services, while revenue sharing and competitive advantage enhance customer loyalty and provide a strategic advantage (Ruddell et al., 2020; Matsuoka, 2022).

Other features with high potential gain are online presence, user credit rating, delivery service and sales enhancement. These features contribute to customer satisfaction, reputation and operational efficiency, making them valuable for business partners (Banerjee et al., 2017; Tsai et al., 2023). Finally, the study emphasizes the importance of customer interface, order taking, reliable service and order clarity, which has moderate potential gains. These features have given an impact on customer satisfaction and reliability, influencing partner decision-making and customer experiences (Cheng et al., 2021; Shankar et al., 2022). Overall, this study presents an appropriate theoretical base for the next investigation to optimize the potential gain of business partners through FDA development.

In practice, this study assists FDA developers and management in sticking to their goals, allocating resources strategically, and improving features that are important for business partners. Developers may enhance the FDA by innovating the poor performance features and keeping the great ones, as demonstrated in this study. This study identified four FDA feature categories based on their importance and performance levels. The first constitutes the “concentrate features” that are thought to be extremely significant yet have underperformed. To satisfy partner expectations, certain qualities, such as competitive advantage, customer loyalty, online presence and user credit rating, must be improved. Second, “good performance features” are highly regarded and have outperformed partner expectations. These features, such as order clarity, credit transfer, customer augmentation, seller-led promotion and customer loyalty, should be preserved and strengthened.

Third, there are “low-priority features” that are seen as irrelevant and underperformed. This category includes features such as customer data ownership, revenue sharing, stable terms and conditions, acceptable terms and conditions, and customer interface. Finally, there are “basic features” that are thought to be unimportant but have high-performance levels. Partners may see specific features, such as delivery, order taking and timely service, as absolute necessities. Therefore, the practical implications indicate that FDA developers should appropriately prioritize and distribute resources according to the significance and performance of features. Companies in the food delivery sector should optimize business potential and exceed partner expectations by focusing on key features, improving good-performing features and retaining basic features.

This study examined the potential gain of the FDA given the restaurant partner's perspectives. The objectives are to evaluate the importance and performance level of the FDA, then determine and optimize its potential gain for FDA partners. By employing IPA, we can illustrate systematically the importance and performance of FDA features into four categories. First is the “concentrate” feature, which consists of competitive advantage, customer loyalty, online presence and a user's credit rating. FDA providers should focus their efforts on allocating their resources to develop those features to fulfill partner expectations. The second is the “good work” feature, which comprises order clarity, credit transfer, customer augmentation, seller-led promotion, building customer loyalty, order data management, sales enhancement, reliable service, and promotion and offers. FDA providers need to ensure consistency in the performance of these features. Third is “low-priority” features that include owning customer data, revenue sharing, stable terms and conditions, acceptable terms and conditions and customer interface. FDA providers are suggested to improve those features in the “concentrate” category to meet partner expectations. The last category is “basic” features, which include delivery, order taking and timely service. FDA developers should design a resource-efficient approach to maintaining those features.

Furthermore, to identify potential gains of the FDA is approached by the PGPV model. This model can illustrate the priority order of potential gain of FDA's feature for the restaurant partners. The greater the PGPV index, the higher the potential gain for partners. In this study, we found features with high and medium levels of the PGPV index, but none with low levels. A high PGPV index implies that FDA partners perceive the greatest potential gain provided by FDA. The feature at this level includes owning customer data, revenue sharing, competitive advantage, stable terms and conditions, customer interface, acceptable terms and conditions, building customer loyalty, online presence, user credit rating, promotion and offers, delivery service and sales enhancement. While the medium PGPV index implies a perception that the features have considerable potential gain for their partner businesses, these features include order taking, reliable service, customer augmentation, order data management, timely service, seller-led promotion, order scheduling, credit transfer and order clarity.

No research is perfect nor is this study. There are two limitations of this study, the first is that the restaurant is a sample only from the micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) levels. Even though there are not as many MSME restaurants, some of the FDA users are restaurants of middle to upper levels. To identify perceptions from all business partners, further research should involve middle to upper levels restaurants. This will be very helpful for FDA providers interested in improving the best performance for all their partners. Second, this research was conducted in Yogyakarta Province. Even though Yogyakarta is representative enough to describe general conditions, to get more extensive data and close to the population, it is advisable to expand the next research to several large representative cities.

This paper forms part of a special section “Digitization and innovation of the food and beverage industry in the post-pandemic era: challenges, drivers and opportunities”, guest edited by Vincenzo Corvello, Ciro Troise, Alberto Michele Felicetti and Paul Jones.

This study gives a clear contribution and verifiable path for improving FDA performance in the future and establishes a proper theoretical basis for subsequent research. Therefore, the authors want to thank the Faculty of Agricultural Technology, Gadjah Mada University, for helping and supporting in providing financial assistance that made it possible to be done properly and executed as expected.