Volume 9, Number 2, December 2019
| Can Drones Deliver Food? What the Food Delivery Industry Needs to Know |
Freddy Paul Jaramillo¹, Kuang-Heng Shih²*, Ching-Chan Cheng³
Abstract
This paper investigates the use of UAV’s or drones for food delivery, applying the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach to determine the key success factors for food delivery by drones. As e-commerce continues to grow; unmanned aerial vehicles or drones have the possibility to reduce the time, cost and energy for deliveries, as well as decongesting the streets in the big cities, drones become an alternative for companies to reach their customers faster. However, there are some obstacles including regulations and technology that slow down this service to be implemented. Although in recent years this technology has been developed substantially, the use of drones for delivery has not been massified at all. The food delivery industry is considering this new way of delivering food, companies in the United States, China and other countries around the world are already testing this service, but to be a viable resource, research on the potential aspects to consider at the time of implementing is needed. This study attempts to develop a comprehensive research framework to identify the success factors for drone-based food delivery service that can give ground for its implementation and performance measurement.
Keywords: Performance Measurement, Drone-Delivery, Food Delivery, UAV, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Drop-Off
¹ Master Program, Department of Global Business, Chinese Culture University, Taiwan
² Associate Professor, Bachelor Program of Fashion Creative Industry & Branding Management, Chinese
Culture University, Taiwan
³ Associate Professor at Department of Food and Beverage Management, Taipei University of Marine Technology, Taiwan
*Corresponding Author, E-mail: sgh2@ulive.pccu.edu.tw , shuling@ntut.edu.tw