BALTIMORE, August 3, 2026 – What can a pizza shop teach us about the dramatic shifts taking place in consumer marketing? Quite a lot, actually. New research that focused on pizza delivery has found that consumer impatience is now driving so much consumer decision-making that even location, price, and quality can take a back seat. While this study focused on pizza delivery, the study’s findings have ramifications for all business-to-consumer firms.
The new research published in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science took a closer look at how faster delivery influences consumer choice. The researchers found that consumer impatience—the desire for rapid delivery—reduces the likelihood that the consumer will comparison-shop, it reduces substitution among sellers, it softens price competition, and it allows lower-quality providers to survive.
The findings challenge conventional wisdom, which holds that faster delivery mostly expands consumer choice and intensifies competition.
The study, “Consumer Impatience, Technological Innovation, and Market Structure,” by Chaewon Seol and Federico Rossi of Purdue University, Sara Valentini of Bocconi University, and Elisa Montaguti of the University of Bologna, analyzed nearly 98,000 pizza-delivery orders placed by more than 6,800 consumers across 51 independently owned pizzerias in a major Northern Italian city between 2010 and 2011.
“Our findings challenge the common assumption that faster delivery simply intensifies rivalry,” said Seol. “Instead, impatience fragments the market, protecting lower-quality providers that rely on proximity while limiting the reach of higher-quality ones.”
The study’s findings show that consumers are highly sensitive to waiting. For the median consumer, a 50% reduction in delivery time is worth more than 20% of the order price. This impatience sharply limits competition, more often giving the order to the establishment which can deliver the product the fastest. The faster delivery time often also negates lowest-price competition.
At the same time, the study authors found that when technology substantially shortens delivery times, however, the market shifts: high-quality firms gain share while many lower-quality establishments exit. So, even while delivery times, combined with consumer impatience, shape the market, the higher quality competitors tend to perform better, ultimately driving lower-quality firms out.
“When delivery time falls by more than 75%, the pattern reverses: market share concentrates among high-quality pizzerias, and many low- and mid-quality establishments exit,” said Rossi. “This is because proximity to the customer is no longer an advantage for some of those lower-quality sellers.”
The researchers also found that the platform consumers use to make decisions and place orders can monetize impatience. Offering a premium delivery service that is 10% faster for an additional fee equal to 10% of the basic menu price increases platform profits by 18.7%.
“For platforms and marketing decision-makers, understanding the dual role of delivery speed is essential,” said Valentini.
“Strategies that treat impatience solely as a cost to be minimized may miss both the competitive advantages it provides,” Montaguti added.
While this study focused on pizza delivery, the findings of this study add to the empirical research on consumer behaviors in an online world. The same dynamics at play in this study can be transferred to any business that sells products online and relies upon delivery channels.
Read the full study here.
About INFORMS and Marketing Science
INFORMS is the world’s largest association for professionals and students in operations research, AI, analytics, data science and related disciplines, serving as a global authority in advancing cutting-edge practices and fostering an interdisciplinary community of innovation. Marketing Science, a leading journal published by INFORMS, publishes research on quantitative marketing, consumer behavior, pricing, and strategy that informs managerial and policy decisions. INFORMS empowers its community to improve organizational performance and drive data-driven decision-making through its journals, conferences and resources. Learn more at www.informs.org or @informs.
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