IoT‐enabled services in online food retailing

• Published date: 01 February 2021
• Author: Suhail A. Khan,Shamim Ahmad,Mohammed Jamshed
• Date: 01 February 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2150

ACADEMIC PAPER

IoT-enabled services in online food retailing

Suhail A. Khan

1

| Shamim Ahmad

2

| Mohammed Jamshed

3

1

Institute of Business Management, GLA

University, Mathura, India

2

Department of Agricultural Economics and

Business Management, Aligarh Muslim

University, Aligarh, India

3

Department of Management, Jamia Hamdard

University, New Delhi, India

Correspondence

Mohammad Jamshed, Department of

Management, Jamia Hamdard University, New

Delhi, India.

Email: mohammedjamshed@jamiahamdard.

ac.in

The present study aims at understanding the application of Internet of Things (IoT) in

online food retailing, influencing purchase frequency of ready-to-eat food products.

The research is empirical in nature in which an internet based consumer survey was

conducted to collect 329 valid responses on PAN India basis. This research compre-

hensively investigated, shortlisted, and finally selected the factors of consumer

involvement and decision making using IoT in online food retailing. The binary logistic

regression model revealed that the factors relative advantage, best deals, availability

and information, consumer satisfaction, and channel efficiency significantly influ-

ences the consumer purchase frequency for ready-to-eat food products at various

stages in online food retailing. The understanding, extrapolation, and proper manage-

ment of these factors will help online food retail players in implementing IoT enable

services effectively in their retail formats to gain consumer confidence.

1|INTRODUCTION

The processed food industry has emerged as a sunrise sector in India

and the capacity of this sector has tremendously increased its poten-

tial for growth and profitability through value addition and multi-stage

processing (Khan, Ahmad, & Jamshed, 2019; Rasul, 2002). The market

for processed food is expected to grow to $543 billion by 2020, with

a CAGR of 14.6%. In recent years the implementation of IoT has

added wings to this sector. Indian online food retailing is still in a

nascent stage. But it is picking up fast and witnessing an exponential

growth. The online food ordering market in India is likely to grow at

the rate of over 16% annually to touch USD 17.02 billion by 2023

(Business Today, 2019). The reason behind this growth is the availabil-

ity of hassle-free service, the time and money can save through

it. Thus it has become very crucial for the players in this sector to

understand clearly the use and impact of IoT services on consumer

involvement and decision making to adjust their value added offerings

to meet the demand of consumers.

Indian retail industry is considered as one of the most promising

sectors from investment point of view across the globe and expected

to hit the mark of US$ 1.1 trillion by 2020 (India Brand Equity Foun-

dation, 2019). With no surprise, its food and grocery segment

accounts for the largest share in the overall Indian retail industry

followed by the apparel segment. However the unorganized food

retail sector dominated heavily on it by a share of 97% and the rest

3% offerings were only by organized food retail market (India Retail-

ing, 2019). In the last few years, the consumers are showing an incli-

nation towards the organized food retail market. Because of this, the

sector is expanding at a pace of 20–25% CAGR per year, which is a

very encouraging indicator for decision-makers and investors in retail

food enterprises. The strategic planning team of these enterprises

should seriously consider this shifting pattern of consumers. These

food enterprises may try to convert this advantage or opportunity by

placing their product and services at such a competitive position and

prices. So, consumers prefer them over those of unorganized food

markets.

In the past few decades, the world has seen a lot of advancement

in technology, Internet of Things (IoT) is one of them (Taylor, Reilly, &

Wren, 2020). IoT is the interconnection of sensing and actuating

devices providing the ability to share information across platforms

through a unified framework, developing a common operating picture

for enabling innovative applications (Gubbi, Buyya, Marusic, & Pal-

aniswami, 2013). An indispensable part of IoT is smart connectivity

with existing networks and context-aware computation using network

resources (Mihovska & Sarkar, 2018). IoT assists in connecting physi-

cal objects that are accessible through internet and an efficient system

can be developed through it. In the present age, its application has

almost touched every sector; and with effectiveness it is penetrating

the micro environment of several domains. The processed food busi-

ness is an inseparable part of our daily life even in this industry 4.0

Received: 4 February 2020 Revised: 14 February 2020 Accepted: 28 March 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2150

J Public Affairs. 2021;21:e2150. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 1of9

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2150