Feast Your Eyes: How Image Features Serves Up Sales on UberEats

The rapid expansion of digital platforms has significantly transformed how information is represented, particularly in the online food delivery industry. On these platforms, consumers make purchasing decisions by browsing images provided by restaurants. Within this evolving landscape, visual imagery plays a crucial yet underexplored role in shaping purchasing decisions on platforms like Uber Eats. This study examines how specific image attributes in food photography impact restaurant sales performance. Leveraging a unique dataset of restaurants from Uber Eats, we employ advanced image-processing techniques to extract 12 key visual features. By applying regression models, we quantify the impact of these visual attributes on restaurant sales. Our findings reveal that texture difference and Saturation positively influence sales, enhancing food appeal and engagement. Conversely, excessive Brightness Contrast has a negative impact, likely due to visual discomfort or diminished product detail. This research contributes to the growing literature on visual marketing and digital commerce by offering empirical evidence on how image design in online food delivery platforms affects purchasing behavior. Our findings provide practical recommendations for food delivery platforms, marketers, and restaurant owners to optimize visual content, ultimately improving consumer engagement, brand perception, and sales performance.