Abstract

Research on why consumers stay satisfied with, continue using and remain loyal to food delivery apps (FDAs) has grown rapidly, but existing bibliometric reviews rely on single subscription databases and do not publish the search, screening or cleaning steps needed to check them. This study maps that research stream with a fully reproducible protocol. A documented query run in OpenAlex on 14 October 2026 returned 539 records; after logged screening, 420 English-language journal articles published between 2016 and 2026 were analysed. Performance analysis compared full and fractional counting and age-normalised citations. Science mapping combined co-citation analysis with concept co-occurrence analysis based on a published 29-concept thesaurus, Louvain clustering with stability checks and a robustness test on core journals. Output grew by about 40% a year between 2019 and 2025 and has levelled off since 2024. It is concentrated in Indonesia, Malaysia and India, while influence is concentrated in a few early studies. The intellectual base forms one cohesive network rather than distinct schools. At the default resolution, three stable conceptual clusters emerge: service performance and experience, technology acceptance in the COVID-19 period, and relational outcomes; finer resolutions separate an emerging experience-oriented theme. Since the pandemic, attention has shifted from COVID-19 framing towards trust, loyalty, customer experience and delivery performance. Few studies name a theory or use non-survey methods. The findings describe research attention, not causal drivers; practical implications are therefore framed as testable hypotheses for different operating scenarios.

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