소비자 관점에서 분석한 ICT 기반의 음식배달서비스 관련 특허 등록 현황

Food environment has been going through significant changes with the introduction of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This study was conducted to investigate the current development status of ICT related to food delivery service by analyzing the relevant registered patents according to consumer buying process. Patents registered between 2002 and 2016 were searched with ‘food’ and ‘delivery’ as main keywords through Korea Intellectual Property Rights Information Service (www.kipris.or.kr). The search resulted in 624 patents among which 219 patents were related to food delivery service; 108 patents based on ICT were selected and analyzed. The patents were examined by applicant and year. The patents were classified into the six steps of consumer buying process: ‘need recognition’, ‘information search’, ‘evaluation’, ‘choice’, ‘purchase’, and ‘postpurchase evaluation’. Patents belonging to more than one step were coded to all the corresponding steps. The patents were registered mainly by domestic companies (50.9%) and individuals (35.2%), having shown dramatic increase of registration since 2012. Over 2/3 (67.6%) of the patents were related to the ‘purchase’ step. About 32% were associated with the 'information search' step. Approximately 18% of the patents were relevant to the 'evaluation' and 'choice’ steps, respectively. The numbers of patents related to the 'postpurchase evaluation (13.9%)’ and 'need recognition (12.0%)' steps were relatively low. The current ICTs related to food delivery service in Korea were largely associated with service providers' profit generation rather than consumers' benefit. There is still much room for technology development that could contribute to increasing consumers' benefit.