“Order now” or “Buy local”? Communication Strategies of Food Delivery Platforms on Social Media

Food delivery platforms operate at the intersection of commercial efficiency and community-based engagement, making their communication efforts on social media platforms inherently complex. This study investigates how such platforms navigate the tension between commercial and community logics in their social media communication. Drawing on the institutional logics perspective, we examine the persuasive strategies these platforms employ to appeal to diverse audience expectations. By relying on a dataset of more than 12.000 observations and employing automated text analysis, our findings reveal how food delivery platforms blend call-to-action messaging with cues of local embeddedness to negotiate their hybrid identity. The study contributes to understanding how platform-based firms manage institutional complexity in digital communication environments