PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

Nowadays, customers globally are turning to online shopping for almost everything, which is considered a new norm expected to remain indefinitely. Although online food delivery ,has become a trend, several issues hinder customers from purchasing food online, such as poor customer reviews, trust issues, low food quality, poor packaging, delay in delivery, and risk associated with personal data. Thus, this study aims to identify the effect of reference groups, positive online comments, perceived risks, perceived benefits, and food safety consciousness of online food delivery ordering (OFDO) adoption. The convenience sampling technique was used to collect data from Malaysian consumers. The questionnaire survey data was collected from 288 respondents using the structural equation modelling-partial least squares (SEM-PLS) method. This study shows that reference groups, positive online comments, perceived benefits, and food safety consciousness positively affect the purchase behaviour of online food delivery services. Among all factors, the perceived benefit of online food delivery ordering (OFDO) has the largest effect on consumer behaviour (f2=0.273). Customers prefer using OFDO due to the application’s user-friendly interface, variety of choices, ease of ordering from anywhere and anytime, better discounts, rewards, and cashback.

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