Vol. 7, Issue 1, Part M (2025)

Digital channels now mediate how consumers form, test, and update their food quality experience across the full journey. This study integrates platform/social cues (reviews and ratings), visual-sensory cues (image-based signals of freshness/temperature/crispness), and assurance/traceability cues (interactive QR/2D codes exposing batch, expiry, and origin) into a single pathway connecting expectations to perceived food quality, satisfaction, trust, and behaviour. Using a 12-month, multi-source panel (28, 412 users; 184, 221 orders; 416 brands; 5, 132 SKUs), we combine platform telemetry, review text and images, QR usage logs, delivery operations, and two-stage surveys. A covariance-based SEM, supplemented by staggered-adoption difference-in-differences, moderation tests, and A/B experiments, evaluates the proposed relationships. Measurement showed strong reliability and global fit. Platform/social cues raised perceived diagnosticity (β=0.41), visual congruence increased expectation strength (β=0.29), and assurance utilisation increased trust (β=0.33). Expectations predicted perceived food quality (β=0.42), which most strongly drove satisfaction (β=0.58); satisfaction (β=0.47) and trust (β=0.31) increased repurchase intention and willingness-to-pay. Mediation confirmed that reviews act mainly via diagnosticity → expectations, while assurance acts via trust. Moderation indicated steeper review effects for low-equity brands and stronger assurance payoffs under reliable last-mile delivery. Event-study estimates showed a sustained trust lift of ~+1.8 to +2.7 percentage points within three months of QR adoption. In A/B tests, assurance badges increased willingness-to-pay by +2.8%, repurchase by +1.9 percentage points, and basket share by +1.2 points. Out-of-sample predictivity improved from AUC=0.71 (baseline) to 0.79 in the full model. Managerially, governing diagnostic reviews, enforcing category-diagnostic imagery, and making assurance scannable—and then delivering on time and intact—jointly elevate perceived quality, satisfaction, and repeat patronage. The findings position “assurance quality” as a distinct, actionable layer alongside information, system, and service quality in digital food experiences.