The convenience-cost paradox: An empirical study of consumer price sensitivity toward platform fees, surcharges, and cart-building mechanisms in quick-commerce

Abstract

Urban retail has been revolutionized by Quick Commerce (Q-Commerce) in India, which uses hyper-local dark shop operations to fulfil orders in less than fifteen minutes. While websites like Amazon, Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy, and Instamart. The necessary transition to unit-level economics has resulted in additional costs, such as handling charges, surge pricing, and minimum spend criteria, after initial market share was acquired through promotional discounts and zero-delivery models. The consequent "Convenience-Cost Paradox"—the behavioural conflict between consumers' appreciation of quick delivery and the cognitive strain caused by the accumulation of micro fees—will be examined in this research. The study assesses the connections between perceived convenience, fee tolerance, cart abandonment, and interface nudges using a cross-sectional descriptive survey of N = 400 active quick-commerce users in metro areas of India. The results show that while basic platform fee acceptance is supported by high convenience utility, multi-homing app switching is driven by dynamic surcharges, and unplanned impulsive additions are systematically induced by delivery threshold prompts. There are strategic suggestions for cart optimization and sustainable platform pricing.