Title: Key drivers of consumers' preference for purchasing ready-to-eat food products: a study of Delhi-NCR

Authors: Shruti Bansal; Shobha Bhardwaj; Deepak Kumar Agarwal

Addresses: Department of Commerce and Business Administration, M.M.H. College, Ghaziabad, India Affiliated to C.C.S. University, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India ' Faculty of Management, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Delhi-NCR Campus, Ghaziabad, India ' Multanimal Modi College, Modinagar, Uttar Pradesh, 201204, India

Abstract: In this paper, we introduce the notion of healthy food. Very few studies had discussed the internal and external drivers influencing consumers towards ready-to-eat (RTE) food. This research study aimed to investigate the reasons why individuals residing in Delhi-NCR prefer to consume RTE food, as the majority of them are working and do not have sufficient time to purchase and cook fresh ingredients at home regularly. Therefore, this study tries to identify and provide a few stable solutions by selecting intrinsic and extrinsic factors that can impact consumers' purchase intention towards RTE food. For gaining insight knowledge a survey was conducted over the Delhi-NCR population to derive the niche expertise of findings. The PLS-SEM has been applied to the collected data. The results in the final optimised model represent that the factors namely convenience, healthiness, food safety concerns, price, and packaging significantly influenced the purchase intentions of consumers. This exploratory research has several practical implications from the company's, customer's, and governmental point of view which is discussed in detailing the later part of the study.

Keywords: ready-to-eat; RTE; National Capital Region; NCR; healthiness; food safety; extrinsic factor.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSEM.2025.146245

International Journal of Services, Economics and Management, 2025 Vol.16 No.3, pp.232 - 252

Received: 07 Feb 2023
Accepted: 14 Sep 2023
Published online: 14 May 2025 *

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