Research On Sustainable Operation Strategies Of The Takeaway Platform With The Participation Of Multiple Players

The takeaway platform connects multiple players such as consumers,riders,and merchants through mobile internet technology and smartphone interface,which enables all players to benefit from it and play an increasingly important role in creating huge economic and social values.However,with the strengthening of the interaction of multiple players,the network effect generated by the platform becomes more and more significant.This makes the unsustainable operation of any one of the multiple players will lead to the damage of the interests of other players and eventually affect the sustainable operation of the platform.Based on this,this paper explores the problems that affect the sustainable operation of the takeaway platform from the perspective of the participation of multiple players,so as to clarify the key factors that influence the sustainable operation of each participating player.Then,this paper further proposes strategic suggestions to promote their sustainable operation in order to facilitate the sustainable operation of the platform.The research conducted in this paper is as follows.(1)For the factors affecting consumers’ continuance intention of using takeaway apps,this paper combines Technology Acceptance Model and Privacy Calculus Theory to propose the hypothesis of behavioral intention and validates the proposed hypothesis by using PLS-SEM based on questionnaire data.Then,combined with statistical analysis,this paper clarifies that consumer satisfaction,perceived value of personalized services,perceived usefulness of takeaway apps,habit,trust and platform image are the key factors that drive their intention to continuously use the takeaway apps.Among them,consumer satisfaction is the most significant influence,while the perceived ease of use of the takeaway app does not lead to consumer satisfaction and their intention to continuously use it.Moreover,although consumers will concern about their personal privacy,they will show ambivalence in front of personalized services and tend to choose to disclose information to obtain perceived value enhancement.Meanwhile,consumers’ concerns about the quality of service provision by merchants,rider competence,and the environmental impact caused by takeaway consumption are key factors that influence them not to(continuously)use takeaway apps.(2)For the sustainability of takeaway merchants,this paper combines a multi-criteria decision-making approach to construct a framework for evaluating the sustainability performance of takeaway merchants.On the basis of the proposed framework,this paper use the Bayesian best and worst method to obtain the weights of the criteria,and the HDBSCAN method to cluster the takeaway merchants according the sustainability criteria.The evaluation and clustering results show that economic sustainability is the most important factor for platform managers,followed by social sustainability,and environmental sustainability is the least important.Among all the sub-criteria,providing safe food for customers,using more degradable packaging,gaining economic advantage through direct profitability and gaining economic advantage through delivery speed are the criteria that platform managers pay high attention to.Meanwhile,the current takeaway merchants exhibit four categories of sustainability levels: low,medium-low,medium-high and high.The distribution of merchants in the high and low categories differs significantly,with merchants of low sustainability dominating,and mostly small and medium-sized ones.Among the cuisine clusters,the overall sustainability performance of burger and pizza is the best,while the environmental and economic sustainability performance of casual dining and bento and spicy hotpot cuisine is poor,and the social sustainability performance is better.(3)For the competence of crowdsourcing riders,this paper proposes a multi-criteria competence analysis method for assessing competence of personnel by combining competence theory and multi-criteria decision-making method.Combined with the real situation of the crowdsourcing riders of Meituan takeaway,a multi-criteria competence analysis framework is constructed.The Bayesian best and worst method is used to determine the weights of the criteria,and the comprehensive competence level of the crowdsourcing riders is calculated using an additive value function with the collected riders’ competence scores.The findings reveal that riders’ skills are most valued by platform managers,while knowledge is the least important.Among all the sub-criteria,the punctuality,customer service awareness,responsible and products intact are assigned high weights.The four sub-criteria constitute the basic requirements for the competence of crowdsourcing riders,that is,riders are required to have certain customer service awareness and deliver the products ordered by customers intact and on time in a responsible manner.At the same time,the competence level of crowdsourcing riders increases with time served and the subsequent stability of the competence increases over time.(4)For the negative environmental externality that arises from the end of the forward flow of takeaway services,this paper investigates the decision problem of the takeaway platform to promote the use of eco-friendly lunch box es by takeaway merchants.Accordingly,this paper constructs a game model for three scenarios:merchants do not use eco-friendly lunch boxes,merchants use eco-friendly lunch boxes but the platform does not offer incentives,and merchants use eco-friendly lunch boxes and the platform offers incentives.For the third scenario,this paper then designs three contractual mechanisms to coordinate the takeaway service supply chain composed of the platform and merchants.The study concludes that when takeaway merchants use eco-friendly lunch boxes but are not incentivized by the takeaway platform,they will lose profit and are not willing to use them.In the platform-incentive scenario,bilateral cost-sharing contracts cannot coordinate the takeaway service supply chain.Both the eco-box promotion contract and the cost-sharing-revenue sharing contract can coordinate the takeaway service supply chain and thus promote the use of eco-friendly lunch boxes by takeaway merchants.The incremental profits of the takeaway platform and merchants under the cost-sharing-revenue sharing contract are always higher than those under the eco-box promotion contract.Meanwhile,as consumers’ perceptions of eco-friendly lunch box deepen,it is more favorable for the takeaway platform and takeaway merchants to promote eco-friendly lunch boxes.However,the level of effort made by the takeaway platform to promote eco-friendly lunch boxes declines as the promotion cost rises.