The measurement of engagement in food delivery app: Developing and validating the customer engagement between consumer and platform through a scale.

The objectives of the work are (i) to analyze customer engagement (CE) within the world of food delivery applications, (ii) to understand its effects and (iii) to find metrics to analyze CE. For this, an in-depth study of the literature will be carried out to analyze the first dimensions correlated with CE and related variables. Then, through focus groups, the previously chosen variables will be better defined. Following this, using some statistical techniques including factor analysis, a scale will be identified to describe CE in online food delivery applications. The work will be divided first into a qualitative part that will explore the issues mentioned above and a second, a quantitative part that will serve to reach a definitive scale. The food delivery scale was developed following (Churchill, 1979) criteria for its development. To define the scale, it is important to understand what engagement is and from which discipline it originated in order to define the dimensions related to engagement on online platforms. In the first section of the paper, a literature review will be conducted to better understand the term engagement and CE through the transition from the offline world to the online world. Then, the world of the peer-to-peer economy will be analyzed to distinguish sharing economy platforms from crowdsourcing platforms, to arrive at the final definition of online food delivery apps. Subsequently, it will be possible to analyze in depth the online food delivery platforms (OFDP) and its market. All this will help to understand the dimensions that make up CE. A questionnaire will be designed based on our experience and on the literature. Next, an initial focus group will be held to adjust the questionnaire and have the definitive version. It will be sent to users to obtain a sufficient sample to be able to conduct an exploratory factor analysis from which we will obtain the necessary metrics to identify the scale and the dimensions in which CE is deployed. After the exploratory factor analysis, the reliability analysis will be performed. The expected results refer to the identification of the appropriate dimensions that reflect CE in OFDP to understand if they correspond to the usual dimensions identified for CE in the literature (vigor, absorption, and dedication), or if different ones can be identified. To do this, however, it was also necessary to perform a factor analysis on the dimensions prior to customer participation to ensure that the user was following a logical path in completing the questionnaire.