Reconsidering convenience

On-demand digital services provide convenient and fast fulfilment of consumption. From their emergence in media, on-demand digital services have expanded in ride-hailing, food delivery and retail. While there is abundant research on digitalisation in various consumption sectors, few have identified the interrelations between digital services across multiple consumption sectors and their implications for consumption behaviours. Using domestication theory, this article explores the interconnections between households’ cognitive, practical and symbolic learning of various on-demand digital services to understand how they shape the understanding of and responses to convenience in consumption. Findings from qualitative interviews in the United Kingdom show linkages between how households learn about, use, and develop meanings around online media, food delivery, ride-hailing and retail services. Learning from one service affects households’ awareness, skills, routinisation and meaning-making of other services. These multi-sited learnings engender shared expectations of convenience within and across digital services that are interpreted and negotiated through households’ identities. The dynamic process between households and technologies organised around convenience shapes households’ temporal and spatial coordination of their consumption. Recognising the similarities and interdependencies in how households engage with various digital services in media, retail, food and ride-hailing helps us understand digitalisation as an overarching transformation of consumption

Consumption (sociology) · Digital media · Digital transformation · Domestication · Everyday life · Interdependence · Process (computing) · Qualitative research · Service (business) · Consumer Retail Behavior Studies · Service and Product Innovation · Sharing Economy and Platforms