Drone food delivery services refer to services that use drones to deliver food to customers as the role of services becomes more important in the food service industry, because drone food delivery services are not affected by traffic, so they can deliver food quickly. However, there is still a lack of research about drone food delivery services. Thus, this study examined the importance and necessity of drone food delivery services using the concept of perceived innovativeness. In Korea, a total of 324 samples collected in order to test the proposed model including fifteen hypotheses. The data analysis results showed that perceived innovativeness has a positive influence on attitude toward using drone food delivery services and behavioral intentions including intentions to use and word-of-mouth intentions. In addition, the attitude played an important role in the formation of behavioral intentions. Lastly, this study found the important moderating role of gender and age.

Introduction

A drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle without human control, and its role in the era of the fourth industrial revolution has attracted a great deal of attention. Since the drones were primarily used for military purposes at first, drones were very expensive and not popular (Dronethusiast, 2018). According to National Defense (2017), the world market for drones will surge from about US 4.2$ billion to US 10.3$ billion in 2026. One of the important reasons for this is the diversity of drone uses. For example, in Japan, drones spray pesticides on farms and take photographs in the air to check crop status (The Japan Times, 2018). In addition, in Australia, drones played an important role in rescuing two children in the sea (The Straits Times, 2018). The role of drones in the food service industry is also attracting much attention, and many companies are making great efforts to develop and utilize drone food delivery services. Drone food delivery services have the advantage of being able to deliver quickly, avoiding traffic congestion and deliver anywhere regardless of location. For instance, Yogiyo, one of the largest food delivery service companies in Korea, successfully completed a food delivery test using drones (Digital Daily, 2016). In addition, in Reykjavik, Iceland, Tel Aviv-based drone supplier Flytrex started to provide a service for customers to deliver food using drones without having to visit an actual store (New York Post, 2017). At Kite Beach, Dubai in 2017, Costa Coffee began delivering ice coffee to customers on the beach using drones (The National, 2017). UberEats, a US food delivery service company, also announced that it will launch a service to deliver food to customers using drones from 2021 (Forbes, 2018). Drone food delivery services are automatic, which are not based on manual adjustments but on a computer system (Drone, 2018). In other words, the computer designates the path the drones follow before delivering food, so the risk associated with air traffic or accidents is very low. Although drone food delivery services are currently limited in certain areas, it is anticipated that drone food delivery services will be activated in many areas in the future.