How Application Ease Affects Buying Interest: ShopeeFood Study among University Students

. Buying interest is impacted by multiple factors, among which perceived ease of use plays a crucial role. This study aims to examine how the perceived ease of using applications affects Universitas Negeri Semarang students' interest in buying food products through ShopeeFood and the extent of its influence. Data collection involved distributing questionnaires to 100 respondents based on specific criteria. The analysis methods utilized comprised descriptive percentage testing and regression analysis. Findings from the descriptive percentage test indicated that the majority of respondents found ShopeeFood easy to use, and their interest in buying through the platform was notably high. Regression analysis revealed a positive and significant relationship between perceived ease of use and buying interest, represented by the equation = 11.702 + 0.402X. This signifies that perceived ease of use has a meaningful impact on buying interest. The R2 value of 40.4% illustrates that perceived ease of use influences 40.4% of the interest in online purchases via ShopeeFood .


INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the culinary landscape, particularly in Semarang, has expanded significantly, witnessing a surge in culinary ventures.According to data retrieved from the Dinas Komunikasi Informatika Statistika dan Persandian Kota Semarang in Sadtyaji (2022), the food and beverage industry in Semarang experienced notable growth from 2019 to 2022.Specifically, the number of food and beverage establishments escalated from 1.815 in 2019 to 1.873 in 2020 and remarkably reached 3.250 in 2021.This rapid evolution in the culinary domain has coincided with the swift advancements in information technology.Many individuals utilize these advancements to engage in transactions for various food products using available technological platforms.One such technological stride in the culinary realm is the emergence of diverse online food delivery services, including ShopeeFood.ShopeeFood stands as one of Indonesia's most favored online food delivery platforms, extensively utilized in the UNNES campus vicinity.According to a survey conducted by the research agency Strategics (2022) among 1,200 respondents regarding online food delivery usage in Indonesia, GoFood held the lead position with 76%, closely followed by ShopeeFood at 72%, and GrabFood at the rear with 64%.
The number of users significantly influences the inclination to make purchases.As the user count on ShopeeFood surges, it amplifies the likelihood of users being drawn to purchasing products.Buying interest denotes an internal inclination to acquire a product or engage in purchase-related actions (Kotler et al., 2009).This interest may emerge from necessity or from a sense of desire, driven by a perceived need or want.When these needs or desires are perceived and reinforced by supporting factors, they prompt actions to fulfill those needs or wants.An individual's level of interest in making a purchase can be gauged through specific indicators.Ferdinand, as cited in Nurrahmanto & Rahardja (2015), identifies transactional, reference, preferential, and explorative indicators as measures of purchase interest.
The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is a theoretical framework designed to explore the factors influencing the adoption of information technology (Wibowo, 2019).Initially formulated by Davis and his associates, the theory aimed to elucidate the key determinants impacting the overall acceptance of computers.TAM stands as a pivotal and extensively utilized model for understanding an individual's acceptance of information technology (Rodiah & Melati, 2020).Central to the TAM theory is the assertion that various elements, including perceived ease of use, significantly influence the adoption of technology.
Perceived ease of use refers to how confident someone feels while using a system that does not demand much effort (Glikson & Woolley, 2020).People typically prefer simplicity, especially when dealing with technological systems.If using technology feels simpler, users are more inclined to continue using it-this principle extends to platforms like online food delivery, such as ShopeeFood.Accessing accurate and dependable information easily not only provides comfort during online transactions but also enhances the overall user experience (Kamis & Frank, 2012).A comfortable and pleasant experience on ShopeeFood is anticipated to boost consumer interest in purchasing the available food products.Similar to buying interest, perceived ease of use can be evaluated using indicators, such as ease of recognition, navigation, information gathering, and purchasing, as suggested by Aladwani (2002).
Qian et al. (2021) highlighted several factors that impact the inclination to buy via online food delivery services, which encompass price, convenience, usability perception, ease perceptions, compatibility, and trust.This aligns with the study conducted by Taufiqurrohman et al. (2022) investigating factors influencing purchase interest in online food delivery through Gofood.Their findings revealed that promotions, product ratings, and ease of use significantly sway the interest in food purchases among Universitas Negeri Malang students.
This study is geared towards three primary objectives.First, it seeks to outline and comprehend consumer perceptions concerning the ease of utilizing the ShopeeFood online food delivery platform.Second, it aims to delve into the purchasing interest of UNNES students with regards to buying food products through the ShopeeFood platform.Lastly, the study endeavors to ascertain the impact of perceived ease of application use on the purchasing interest of UNNES students when acquiring food products via the ShopeeFood online delivery service.

METHODS
The research design employed is associative descriptive research with a quantitative approach, focusing on two primary variables: perceived ease of use (X) as the independent variable and purchasing interest (Y) as the dependent variable.The population size being extensive and unconfirmed, a sample of 100 respondents was derived using the Lemeshow formula.The sample selection method employed was purposive sampling, targeting active UNNES students who have made a minimum of three online food purchases through ShopeeFood.
Data collection utilized a questionnaire distributed via Google Forms, employing a Likert scale.The data acquired through this method constituted primary data, validated using item validity and tested for reliability using Cronbach's Alpha formula.
Analysis involved descriptive percentage analysis to depict student perceptions on perceived ease of use and purchasing interests.Additionally, a simple linear regression analysis was conducted to ascertain the impact of the user-friendly perception variable on student purchasing interests.Preliminary testing encompassed normality, linearity, and correlation coefficient evaluations.Subsequent regression analysis was performed to determine the influence and magnitude of perceived ease of use (X) on purchasing interest (Y).

Result
The outcomes of the data analysis are displayed through tables showcasing percentage distributions.Descriptive examinations are carried out on each variable.In this research, perceived ease of use is designated as the independent variable (X), while purchasing interest serves as the dependent variable (Y).Following the descriptive tests conducted on these variables, the findings are shown in TABLE 1.

TABLE 1.
Results of descriptive percentage test of variable perceived ease of use.

Strongly Disagree (%)
Ease of Recognition 45 53 2 0 0 Ease of Navigation 57 38 5 0 0 Ease of Gathering Information 29 55 15 1 0 Ease of Purchasing 62 34 4 0 0 Perceived Ease of Use 47 50 3 0 0 Based on the table, on the indicator ease of recognition, the highest percentage is in the agreed category with a percentage of 53%, and the lowest percentage is in the category of hesitation, with a percentage of 2%.Ease of recognition consists of finding and accessing services/applications (Aladwani, 2002).So, the majority of respondents agree that it is easy to find, and access ShopeeFood.
The results showed that 57% of respondents highly agreed that navigating the online food delivery service was easy, while only 5% were hesitant.Ease of navigation refers to the ability to move around the service, both within and between pages, with minimal effort (Aladwani, 2002).This feature is particularly important for users to keep track of their orders, including the location of the restaurant and driver.Overall, most respondents strongly agreed that using the ShopeeFood platform to order food was relatively easy, including navigating between pages, moving around the same page, and tracking the restaurant and driver's positions.
According to the data, 55% of respondents found it easy to collect information on ShopeeFood, while only 1% disagreed.This includes gathering information on prices, products or services, and other relevant details (Aladwani, 2002).It could also involve information on discounts, menus, and customer reviews.Overall, most people agreed that it was easy to find all the necessary information about ShopeeFood's online food delivery service.
Out of all the indicators, the ease of purchase has the highest percentage of agreement at 62% and the lowest hesitancy at 4%. Purchase convenience includes the ease of making purchases and canceling orders (Aladwani, 2002).It also encompasses using discount vouchers, making easy payments, and purchasing products anytime and anywhere.Most respondents find it easy to buy food products through the online food delivery service ShopeeFood.
In terms of user-friendliness, the majority of respondents 50% agreed that ShopeeFood is easy to use for ordering food products online, while only a small percentage 3% had doubts.This suggests that UNNES students who use ShopeeFood generally find it easy to use for online food ordering.According to the TABLE 2, 50% of respondents fall under the "highest" category for transactional interest, while only 2% fall under the "lower" category.Transactional interest refers to the inclination to purchase a product (Ferdinand, as cite in Nurrahmanto & Rahardja, 2015).The high percentage in the "highest" category indicates that most respondents strongly agreed when completing the questionnaire, leading to a high transactional interest among UNNES students in purchasing food products through ShopeeFood.
On the reference interest indicator, the highest percentage is in the higher category, with a percentage of 33%, and the lowest percentage is in the highest category, with 4%.Reference interest is the tendency to reference a product to others (Ferdinand, as cite in Nurrahmanto & Rahardja, 2015).So, the reference interest indicator is in the higher category because most respondents agree when filling out the questionnaire.Higher reference interest means the tendency of UNNES students to reference food products in ShopeeFood to other people is higher.
Based on the third indicator, it can be observed that 49% of respondents fall under the neutral category for preferential interest.On the other hand, only 2% of respondents fall under the lowest category.Preferential interest refers to a person's primary preference for a particular product (Ferdinand, as cite in Nurrahmanto & Rahardja, 2015).Therefore, the most of respondents may have had doubts while filling out the questionnaire, which influenced their answers.With regards to UNNES students, this means that ShopeeFood is not their primary choice when purchasing food products online.It is possible that they have other online food delivery options or prefer to buy food directly from restaurants.
According to the data, the most of respondents (60%) showed a higher level of interest in exploring information related to the product in question.In contrast, only 1% of respondents fell into the lower exploratory interest category.Exploratory interest is a behavioral tendency to seek out information about a product (Ferdinand, as cite in Nurrahmanto & Rahardja, 2015).This explains why the higher exploratory interest category was the most common among respondents who completed the questionnaire.So the purchasing interest variable is in the higher category with a percentage of 60%.The descriptive analysis's conclusion on the purchase interest variable is that UNNES students are highly interested in buying food through online food delivery ShopeeFood.
According to the results of the normality test, the data for perceived ease of use and purchase interest were normally distributed with significance values of 0.164 and 0.200 respectively, which are both greater than 0.05.The linearity test showed that the data is linear with a significance value of 0.000, which is less than 0.05.Additionally, the correlation coefficient test revealed a strong relationship between the perceived ease of use and purchasing interest, with a Pearson correlation value of 0.636 and a significance value of 0.000, which is also less than 0.05 (Sugiyono, 2013).
The results of the simple linear regression test of the perception factor of ease of use against consumer interest in purchasing food products through online food delivery ShopeeFood obtained a sig value of 0.000 so that perception of most accessible use has a significant influence on purchasing interest.The results of the simple linear regression test performed with the help of the IMB SPSS Statistic 24 program is shown in FIGURE 1.

FIGURE 1. Result of simple linear regression test.
According to FIGURE 1, the simple linear regression test resulted in the equation Ŷ = 11,702 + 0.402X.This means that the constant (α) is 11.702, indicating that the interest of UNNES students in buying food products through online food delivery ShopeeFood is 11.702 when not influenced by perceived ease of use variable.The regression coefficient (β) for the usability perception variable is 0.402, which means that a one-unit increase in this variable will increase the purchase interest variable by 0.402.To determine the significance of the perceived ease of use variable on purchasing interest, a determination coefficient (R 2 ) test was conducted using the IBM SPSS Statistic 24 program.The results of this test are presented in FIGURE 2. Based on the test results, the R Square value is 0.404, which translates to 40.4% when multiplied by 100%.This indicates that 40.4% of the purchasing interest was influenced by the perceived ease of use variable, while the remaining percentage was influenced by other variables outside the scope of this study.

Discussion
The concept ease of use refers to the belief that using a particular system requires minimal effort (Davis, 1989).In other words, it is the consumer's perception of how easy a system is to use without needing additional effort.If consumers find a technology easy to use, they are more likely to continue using it.This is also true for ShopeeFood messaging service, commonly referred to as ShopeeFood.If consumers find it easy to use, they will continue using it.However, if using the service feels complicated, consumers are likely to stop using it.According to the results of a descriptive test, the most of respondents (53%) agreed that it is easy to recognize everything related to food purchases through online food delivery.This is a contributing factor to the perception of ease of use, with a 23% contribution to the overall variable.
In terms of ease of navigation, 57% of the respondents strongly agreed that using ShopeeFood for online food delivery was easy to navigate.This factor contributed 16.3% to the overall perceived ease of use.Additionally, when it comes to gathering information, 55% of the respondents agreed that it was easy to do so when purchasing food products through ShopeeFood.This factor had a greater contribution of 28.5% to the perceived ease of use.According to the survey, 62% of respondents strongly agreed that purchasing food products through the online food delivery service ShopeeFood, was easy.This ease of purchase factor contributed 16.4% to the overall perceived ease of use of the service.
When looking at the individual indicators within the perception variable, ease of gathering information was the highest contributing factor with 28.5%.The second highest was ease of recognition, followed by ease of purchase with a contribution of 16.4% and the last is ease of navigation had the lowest significant contribution at 16.3%.
The results of the descriptive percentage test showed that UNNES students who use ShopeeFood for online food delivery find it easy to use.Survey respondents agreed that ShopeeFood is ease of use, making it simple to understand, order food products, and navigate the platform.Jogiyanto (2007) defines ease of use as being easy to learn, understand, and use.These findings are consistent with a recent study by Ekanova (2021), where respondents also found ShopeeFood easy to understand and operate for online shopping.
When someone has the desire to buy goods or services, it is called buying interest.This can be a strong urge to make a purchase, either out of necessity or simply because they want to (Kotler et al., 2009).If someone is interested in buying something, there are actions they can take to fulfill that desire.Buying interest is made up of four elements: attention, interest, desire, and conviction (Lucas & Britt in Sinambela et al., 2022).
The descriptive test for the purchase interest variable examined four factors.The first factor is transactional interest, had a highest percentage of 50%.This is because most respondents strongly agreed with statements related to transactional interest in the questionnaire.This result is consistent with previous research on shopping interest among Shopee consumers in Yogyakarta.In Bantul, for example, 64% of consumers showed a highest interest in buying (Wulandari et al., 2021).Similarly, previous research on purchasing products from AIDI.ID found that transaction interest was very high, with a value of 4.417 (Audia et al., 2018).
According to this survey, the second factor that stands out is reference interest, which 33% of students agreed, this indicates a high level of interest in referrals.Similar research on Facebook shopping found that transaction interest scored an impressive 1720, which is considered excellent (Mahanani, 2022).Another study on consumer shopping interest in Yogyakarta revealed that reference interest in Sleman district is also high, with 48% (Wulandari et al., 2021).
The third factor which is preferential interests, falls within the neutral category at 49%.This is because most respondents were unsure about their preferred interest statements.Previous studies conducted in Medan on the purchase of cigarettes revealed that the average preferential interest was 2.86 times per day (Ismah, 2020).Similarly, research on the purchase of Suzuki motorcycles in Semarang City showed that the preferential interest value falls within the medium category at 55.7 (Naufal & Ferdinand, 2015).
According to the most of students surveyed, exploration interest is higher with 60% agreeing.This aligns with Saleh's (2022) study on explorative interest in online shopping via Facebook, which obtained a score of 604, classified as excellent.In addition, research on Shopee consumer interest in shopping in Yogyakarta found that explorative interest falls in the high category for the area, with a percentage of 56% (Wulandari et al., 2021).
According to the study, the most of UNNES students have a high interest in purchasing food products online through the online food delivery service ShopeeFood.The percentage of students who expressed interest in buying online is 60%, which is considered high.The study found that students were interested in learning more about the products, trying them out, and ultimately purchasing them through ShopeeFood.Additionally, the respondents had no objections to recommending ShopeeFood to others.
Schiffman & Kanuk in Banytė et al. (2007) found that individuals who seek information about products, consider purchasing them, express interest in trying them, want to know more details, and desire to buy them are more likely to have buying interest.Rahayu's (2021) research supports this finding, as the most of respondents showed a strong interest in purchasing through ShopeeFood.This preference was due to the perception that ShopeeFood is better than other online food delivery services and the intention to continue using it for online food purchases The results of the normality test on the variables of ease of use and purchase interest showed that the data was distributed normally, with significant values of 0.164 and 0.05.The linearity test also showed that the data was linear, with a significant linearity value of 0.000.Further testing revealed a strong correlation between perceived ease of use and purchasing interest, with a significance value of 0.000 and a Pearson correlation value of 0.636 (Sugiyono, 2013).These results suggest that a simple linear regression test can be conducted.
According to Sugiyono (2013) regression analysis can predict changes in related variable values when free variable values are manipulated.This study used a simple linear regression analysis with only two variables, an independent variable (X) and a dependent variable (Y).The regression test results gave the equation Ŷ = 11.702+ 0.402X.This equation indicates that the constant (α) is 11.702, which means that UNNES students are interested in buying food products through the online food delivery platform ShopeeFood even when not influenced by the perception variable perceived ease of use.Additionally, the regression coefficient (β) for the perceived ease of use variable is 0.402, indicating that a one-unit increase in the facility-perceptive variable will increase the purchasing interest variable by 0.402.The significance value of 0.000 < 0.05 also shows that the perception factor of perceived ease of use significantly influences the interest in buying food products through ShopeeFood among UNNES students.This study is consistent with research conducted by Qian et al. (2021) on the factors influencing interest in purchasing through online food delivery services, including price, convenience, perception of utility, perceptions of convenience, compatibility, and trust.The results of this study also align with research conducted by Taufiqurrohman et al., (2022) on the factors affecting interest in buying online food delivery through Gofood, which found that promotion, product rating, and ease of use significantly influence the interest in buying food among students of Universitas Islam Malang.
After completing the regression test, the next step is to perform a determination coefficient test (R 2 ).This test measures the impact of the perceived ease of use variable as an independent variable on the purchasing interest variables as dependent variables.The R Square value obtained from the determination coefficient test is 0.404, which is equivalent to 40.4% when multiplied by 100%.This result indicates that the ease-of-use perception of the application influenced UNNES students' interest in purchasing food products online through ShopeeFood by 40.4%, while other factors outside the research variable affected the remainder.

CONCLUSION
After conducting research, it has been determined that: 1. UNNES students find it easy to use ShopeeFood, an online food delivery service, to order food products.2. There is a high level of interest among UNNES students in purchasing food products from fellow students through ShopeeFood.

TABLE 2 .
Results of descriptive percentage test of variable buying interest.