A UNIFIED FACTOR ANALYSIS AND DISTANCE BASED EVALUATION APPROACH TO EVALUATE THE PREFERENCES TOWARDS ONLINE FOOD ORDERING APPLICATIONS IN SAUDI ARABIA

Owing to the hard-pressed way of life these days, online food applications have emerged as a trend. Everyone prefers to order food online, rather than cooking at home or eating home-cooked meals, in the search of flavor and variety. Advancing technology has been playing a significant role in the establishment and progression of online cellular food ordering applications of which HungerStation, Walem, Talabat, Daeemdelivery, Shadda, Careem Now, and Jahez are the most recurrent and frequently used applications by the customers in Saudi Arabia. In this paper, various factors are explored which influence the customers in the use of online food ordering applications by using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). Four factors, namely Right Contents & Packaging, Offers & Discounts, Timely Delivery, and User-Friendly, are identified and then, based on these factors' preferences of customers towards the top four online food ordering apps of Saudi Arabia are evaluated by Evaluation Based on Distance from Average Solution (EDAS) technique.