Digital marketing adoption and restaurants’ performance: an analysis through the lens of TOE

Restaurants can strategically leverage Digital Marketing as a cost-optimized tool for efficient stakeholder communication, thereby influencing overall performance. Although the accessibility of information has a great influence on the performance of restaurants, the relationship between Digital Marketing Adoption and Business Performance has received little scholarly attention. Resource shortage, shifting to new technology, technological obstacles, and a competitive environment are the major challenges affecting the industry. The research explores the mediating nature of Digital Marketing on the relationship between Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) features and the restaurant business performance. The observations highlight the positive and direct relationship between the elements of TOE, Digital Marketing adoption (DMA) and restaurant business performance. Partially mediation is evident between technological and organizational factors and business performance, but none between environmental factors and business performance. It is the study by the data gathered among 504 restaurateurs and managers and analyzed with the assistance of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The study can be of use to practitioners and researchers interested in understanding the Digital Marketing adoption in the restaurant business, as it offers an empirical multi-dimensional model with varying determinants affecting the adoption.