Substitutable products

Not every delivery purchase should be treated equally.

#Brand-defined products

For some products, merchant identity is part of the product itself.

Example:

• Big Mac.

A substitute from another restaurant is not necessarily equivalent.

#Specification-defined products

For other purchases, the user may care primarily about attributes rather than origin.

Examples:

• 500 ml açaí;
• cheese pizza of a given size;
• 500 ml bottled water;
• simple lunch meal.

For these cases, the comparison problem can be represented as:

user intent
→ attributes
→ candidate offers
→ normalized comparison

#Research question

Which delivery categories are substitutable enough for comparison to provide real utility without hiding meaningful product differences?