Analysing how impatience impacts consumer behaviour in an online world

What can a pizza shop teach us about the dramatic shifts taking place in consumer marketing? Quite a lot, it seems.  

New academic research focused on pizza delivery has found that impatience is now driving so much consumer decision-making that even location, price and quality can take a back seat.  

While this study focused on pizza delivery, the researchers believe its findings have ramifications for most business-to-consumer firms. 

Published in the Informs (an international association for professionals in various research fields) journal Marketing Science, it analyses how faster delivery influences consumer choice.  

The researchers found that consumer impatience – the desire for rapid delivery – reduces the likelihood that the consumer will comparison-shop, reduces substitution among sellers, softens price competition, and allows lower-quality providers to survive. 

These findings challenge conventional wisdom, which holds that faster delivery mostly expands consumer choice and intensifies competition. 

Titled ‘Consumer Impatience, Technological Innovation and Market Structure’, the study is authored by Chaewon Seol and Federico Rossi of Purdue University in the US, Sara Valentini of Bocconi University in Italy, and Elisa Montaguti of the University of Bologna in Italy. 

“Our findings challenge the common assumption that faster delivery simply intensifies rivalry,” says Seol. “Instead, impatience fragments the market, protecting lower-quality providers that rely on proximity while limiting the reach of higher-quality ones.” 

Consumers are highly sensitive when it comes to waiting 

The study’s findings show that consumers are highly sensitive to waiting. For the median consumer, a 50% reduction in delivery time is worth more than 20% of the order price. This impatience sharply limits competition, more often giving the order to the establishment which can deliver the product the fastest. The faster delivery time often also negates lowest-price competition. 

At the same time, the study authors found that when technology substantially shortens delivery times, the market shifts: high-quality firms gain share while many lower-quality establishments exit.  

So, even while delivery times combined with consumer impatience shape the market, the higher quality competitors tend to perform better, ultimately driving lower-quality firms out of the market. 

“When delivery time falls by more than 75%, the pattern reverses: market share concentrates among high-quality pizzerias and many low- and mid-quality establishments exit,” notes Rossi. “This is because proximity to the customer is no longer an advantage for some of those lower-quality sellers.” 

The researchers also found that the platform consumers use to make decisions and place orders can monetise impatience. Offering a premium delivery service that is 10% faster for an additional fee equal to 10% of the basic menu price increases platform profits by 18.7%. 

“For platforms and marketing decision-makers, understanding the dual role of delivery speed is essential,” explains Valentini. 

“Strategies that treat impatience solely as a cost to be minimised may miss both the competitive advantages it provides,” Montaguti adds. 

While this study focused on pizza delivery, the findings of this study add to the empirical research on consumer behaviours in an online world. The same dynamics at play in this study can be transferred to any business that sells products online and relies upon delivery channels, the research team believes. 

Read the full study here.