Impact of Smart Service Systems on Customer’s Impulse Buying Behavior towards Food and Beverage Products in the Hospitality Industry

Aims: The aim of this research is to identify and analyze the factors affecting impulse buying behavior of customers to purchase foods and beverage products from the Indian hotels and restaurants. Study Design: The study adopts descriptive and analytical research design. A cross-sectional research design has been employed, wherein data was collected from respondents at a single point in time. A well-structured questionnaire was used to measure respondents impulse behaviour. Methodology: To achieve the aim of the study, primary data were collected through well-structured questionnaire. Data were collected from the five districts -Ambala, Kurukshetra, Karnal, Panipat and Sonepat situated along with National Highways-44 in Haryana, from October 2025 to February 2026. A Quota sampling method was used to select an equal number of customers from each district (n=80). Further, the selections of 80 customers from different F&B outlets in each district will be were selected through a judgmental sampling method. 400 Questionnaire were distributes through offline (at various hotels and restaurants of Haryana) mode. Data were analyzed with the help of Structural equation modeling (SEM) with the Smart Partial Least Square (PLS) methodology. Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model was used and analyze the effect of Smart Service Systems (SSSs)—on customers' impulse buying behavior. Results: The study reveals that SSS functionality and innovativeness positively influence experience value, which in turn affects perceived pleasure and perceived usefulness, and further driving impulse buying behavior of customer's. All six hypotheses were found to be positive and statistically significant at the 5% level. The findings highlight the importance of integrating advanced and user-friendly technologies in hospitality services to stimulate impulse buying behavior. Conclusion: This study significantly trying to establishes the S-O-R framework in the context of smart service systems used in the hospitality industry. Overall, the study contributes to the S-O-R theory on technology-enabled consumer behavior and provides valuable implications for both researchers and practitioners in the hospitality industry.