ENHANCING SUSTAINABILITY AND REDUCING CUSTOMER TECHNOSTRESS THROUGH FOOD-ORDERING APPS

Abstract

To investigate customer technostress antecedents and consequences of the restaurants’ food-ordering apps and suggest a coping strategy (i.e., customer orientation). This qualitative study relied on twenty-three semi-structured interviews with Egyptian restaurant customers and managers to understand the customer technostress caused when using food-ordering apps. The study found that restaurant customers experience technostress due to app complexity, security and privacy concerns, frequent app changes, feelings of diminished control, and time constraints. These app-related techno stressors cause customer dissatisfaction and purchasing reluctance. The study also found that not all restaurants adopt a responsive and proactive customer orientation to reduce food-ordering app technostress. However, customers were satisfied with proactive restaurants revealing technostress from food-ordering apps. This study is the first research in the hospitality industry to use Transactional Stress Theory (TST) to investigate the antecedents and consequences and suggest a customer orientation as a coping strategy of customer technostress from food-ordering apps from the perspectives of customers and restaurant managers. As a result, restaurants can be proactive and responsively customer-oriented to overcome customer technostress from food-ordering apps by considering the customers' concerns to satisfy and retain customers and attract new ones.