Special issue of INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCE on

“Smart interactions with consumers: from co-creation to smart partnerships”

In the last decade, marketing has shifted from a traditional product-dominant view, considering the product as the basis of each strategy, to a service-dominant logic, based on the centrality of intangibility in terms of exchanges, relationships, and interactions (Vargo and Lush, 2004; Maglio and Spohrer, 2013; Pantano and Timmermans, 2014). Similarly, current marketing practices associated with information and communication technologies progresses have evolved as prompted by smarter IT services innovations (Demirkan, 2015), by including new forms of interactions with consumers based on the extensive usage of social media, smartphones, mobile apps, ubiquitous systems, etc.. Smart technologies are able to enhance contact points between consumers and firms through emotional engagement, ease of use, user-friendly, high realistic and interactive interfaces, and entertaining scenarios, by creating new augmented reality-based scenarios where offline and online channels can be integrated to create value for consumers (Oh and Teo, 2010; Blazquez, 2014; Demirkan and Spohrer, 2014; Rese et al., 2014; Pantano, 2014). Hence, they reinforce interactions between clients and firms through a huge emotional engagement and a collaborative scenario where consumers are able to actively participate to the creation of the final service (service co-creation) through a sort of “smart interaction” with technology, which reply with high customized information and smart shopping environments (Zwass, 2010; Ngo and O’Cass, 2013; Pantano and Timmermans, 2014). While this topic has been largely exploited by the game industry (Kim et al., 2013), e-commerce, with emphasis in e- retailing still lacks empirical studies on the creation of smart partnerships with end users/consumers.

As a consequence, consumers are involved in a sort of “smart partnerships with the service providers under the common goal to achieve the most satisfying service.

Therefore, the concept of “smartness” goes beyond the pure applications of the smart technologies, by requiring the definition of new forms of value co-creation and interactions with consumers, providing superior experiences and differentiating the final service and product.

Topics of interest

We invite scholars from multiple disciplines including marketing, management, psychology, industrial engineering, computer science to submit papers that explore the new form of interactions with consumers in the emerging smart technologies-based environments (i.e. offline, online or hybrid environments). Empirical, analytical or conceptual approaches are welcome.

Possible research areas include (but are not limited to):

• – smart technologies as enabler of smart the interactions with consumers and stakeholders
• – methodologies for evaluating the success of the smart interactions with consumers
• – smart interactions with consumers in e-tail and e-commerce
• – smart consumers-seller interactions (and viceversa) and consumer-computer-interaction
• – social media supporting smart interactions with consumers
• -consequences of smart interactions with consumers on marketing practices
• – taxonomy of smart partnerships with consumers
• – implications of smart interactions and partnerships within a B2B context

Submission guidelines

Manuscripts submitted to the special issue should contain original material not published in nor submitted to other journals. They should be emailed to the guest editors with “IJEC Special Issue – Smart Interactions” as the subject, follow the format described at http://www.ijec-web.org/information-for-contributors/, and should not exceed 40 pages.  The review process is double-blind.

Guest Editors

• Eleonora Pantano, Middlesex University London, UK, pantano@mdx.ac.uk
• Constantinos-Vasilios Priporas, Middlesex University London, UK, priporas@mdx.ac.uk
• Daniel Baier, Universität Bayreuth, Germany, baier@uni-bayreuth.de

Important dates

• (extended) Abstracts Submission: September 6, 2015 (Email to e.pantano@mdx.ac.uk)
• Abstract Decision: September 21, 2015
• FULL Paper Submission: December 15, 2015
• Revisions and Decision: February 2016

References

• Blazquez, M. (2014). Fashion shopping in multichannel retail: the role of technology in enhancing customer experience. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 18, 4, 97-116.
• Demirkan, H. & Spohrer, J. (2014). Developing a framework to improve virtual shopping in digital malls with intelligent self-service systems. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 21, 5, 860-868.
• Demirkan, H. (2015). Enhancing e-commerce outcomes with IT service innovations. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 19 (3), 2-6.
• Kim, K., Yoo, B., Kauffman, R.J. (2014). Valuation of participation in social gaming. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 18 (2), 11-50.
• Maglio, P.P., & Spohrer, J. (2013). A service science perspective on business model innovation. Industrial Marketing Management, 42, 665-670.
• Ngo, L.V., & O’Cass, A. (2013). Innovation and business success: the mediating role of customer participation. Journal of Business Research, 66, 1134-1142.
• Oh, L.B., & Teo, H.H. (2010). Consumer value co creatioin in a hybrid commerce service-delivery system. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 14 (3), 35-62.
• Pantano, E., & Timmermans H. (2014). What is smart for retailing?. Procedia Environmental Sciences, 22, 101-107.
• Pantano, E. (2014). Innovation drivers in retail industry. International Journal of Information Management, 34, 344-350.
• Rese, A., Schreiber, S. & Baier, D. (2014). Technology acceptance modelling of augmented reality at the point of sale: can surveys be replaced by an analysis of online reviews?. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 21, 5, 869-876.
• Vargo, S.L., & Lusch, R.F. (2004). Evolving to a new dominant logic for marketing. Journal of Marketing, 68, 1-17.
• Zwass, V.  (2010). Co-creation: towards a taxonomy and an integrated research perspective. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 15 (1), 11-48