Online food delivery platforms have had a substantial impact on product evaluation in the food market, especially in developing countries like Georgia. Due to urbanization and lifestyle changes, people tend to shift from offline services toward online delivery platforms like Glovo, Wolt and others. This has increased competition between restaurants and delivery brands because customer experience goes beyond food taste and service quality to packaging presentation. Packaging is the first thing consumers see and touch, and it significantly impacts their perception of the product’s quality, influences their purchasing decisions, and helps them identify and recall the brand. Theoretical analysis shows that product packaging design fulfills an important function of inducing customers to buy the specific products through visual and psychological stimulation. According to the S-O-R theory, external stimuli trigger internal cognitive and emotional processes (organisms), which in turn affect behavioral responses. Prior studies have examined how creative packaging affects retail food delivery. However, there is little focus on the impact of packaging on online food delivery. The branding identity and emotional connection with consumers would be promoted by the unboxing experience and visual impressions. The current study investigates how creative packaging’s fundamental characteristics, such as divergence (novelty) and relevance (appropriateness), influence customer repurchases decisions in Georgia’s online food delivery industry. Then, it employed a quantitative approach using a structured questionnaire, and data were analyzed through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with SmartPLS to test the proposed relationships.
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