Tag Archives: ecommerce

August 21, 2026 · 10:59 am

Call for papers: Strategic governance and ecosystem management in AI-enabled digital marketplaces

Deadline: 10th July 2027

Journal

Journal of Strategy and Management

Guest editor(s)

Ciro Troise, Mark Anthony Camilleri, Mohamed Hani Gheith, Jacopo Ballerini

Introduction

The special issue will focus on issues surrounding strategic governance and ecosystem management in AI-enabled digital marketplaces. Digital marketplaces have become central infrastructures through which firms design, implement, and revise competitive strategies. Across industries, platforms such as Amazon, Alibaba, and Booking.com increasingly shape how firms access markets, coordinate interactions, and capture value. These marketplaces are no longer simply transactional venues: they operate as strategic environments in which rules, data, and intermediation structures redefine the competitive landscape and reshape ecosystem-level outcomes (Bourai et al., 2024; Loonam & O’Regan, 2022). A key reason for the strategic relevance of marketplaces is that they embed governance directly into market processes. Pricing rules, commission systems, access regimes, ranking and recommendation logics, and enforcement routines influence participation incentives and competitive conduct. Marketplace governance thus becomes a strategic design issue rather than an operational detail. This aligns with research conceptualizing platforms as hybrid governance systems that blend market coordination, hierarchical control, and network interdependence, where governance mechanisms continuously evolve in response to ecosystem dynamics (Cuypers et al., 2021; McIntyre et al., 2020). This governance perspective also brings boundary decisions and distribution strategy back to the center of strategic management. For vendors—particularly SMEs—marketplace participation is a fundamental strategic choice affecting dependence, autonomy, capability development, and long-term positioning. Firms increasingly experiment with direct, indirect, and hybrid routes to market, integrating proprietary infrastructures with third-party marketplaces and offline channels. Recent evidence suggests that SME performance depends on how platform adoption interacts with commitment and organizational routines (Ballerini et al., 2023). These choices reflect strategic trade-offs between control and efficiency and are shaped by how firms design and govern multichannel systems (Homburg et al., 2020). Marketplace governance is also deeply intertwined with organizational learning, alliances, and transformation processes. Digital strategy effectiveness depends on cultural and organizational alignment (Cyfert et al., 2025), while dynamic capabilities shape firms’ ability to adapt and transform in digital contexts (Ellström et al., 2022). In turbulent environments, SMEs rely on agility and transformation capabilities to remain competitive (Troise et al., 2022). Moreover, alliances and tacit learning can enable recovery and resilience under constrained governance conditions, particularly in emerging markets (Aditchere et al., 2025). These dynamics highlight that governance is not only imposed by platforms but also shaped by how ecosystem actors learn, adapt, and coordinate over time (Öberg, 2024). At the same time, governance complexity is increasingly amplified by AI-enabled systems embedded in marketplace architectures. Algorithmic ranking, automated monitoring, fraud detection, dynamic pricing, and AI-supported customer management systems increasingly mediate competitive interactions and decision-making. Recent research suggests that generative AI can enhance market effectiveness through CRM-related applications, particularly under technological turbulence and with strong top management support (Kumar et al., 2025). Yet adoption is shaped by managerial cognition and organizational culture: technophobia, self-regulated learning, and open cultures influence managerial intentions to adopt generative AI (Zhao et al., 2025). Marketplace-based business models may also create competitive advantage by reducing time-related frictions for ecosystem participants, reinforcing the strategic role of platform architectures in enabling efficiency and coordination (Santoro et al., 2025). In practice, major marketplaces have already introduced generative AI tools for sellers and advertising optimization (e.g., Amazon’s AI listing tools and ad automation), illustrating how AI is increasingly integrated into governance and ecosystem management logics. These developments raise not only managerial and strategic issues but also broader societal and ethical questions. AI-enabled governance may increase efficiency and scalability, yet it may also intensify opacity, reinforce asymmetries, and raise concerns around accountability, contestability, and fairness. Understanding how governance mechanisms evolve under AI-enabled coordination therefore represents a timely and consequential research agenda. In addition, digital marketplace configurations may shape firm growth and internationalization trajectories in ways that depend on the strategic balance between platform reach and strategic autonomy (Ballerini et al., 2024).

We welcome submissions to this special issue. The special issue seeks a mix of theoretical, conceptual, and empirical cases and is open to various methods (e.g., qualitative case studies, quantitative analysis of platform data, or formal modeling, etc.). It welcomes theoretically grounded and empirically rich contributions that advance strategy and management research on governance and ecosystem management in AI-enabled digital marketplaces. We encourage conceptual and theory-building contributions, qualitative and process-based studies, large-scale empirical analyses (including digital trace and platform data), mixed-method research, and comparative cross-country work. In line with emerging methodological developments, we also explicitly welcome innovative approaches such as agent-based modeling, longitudinal ecosystem mapping, and multi-level designs that connect governance mechanisms to ecosystem-level outcomes. Topics covered include (but are not limited to):

1. Designing and revising governance architectures in digital marketplaces

  • How governance systems are deliberately designed, experimented with, and revised over time
  • Strategic trade-offs between openness, control, and scalability across platform life cycles
  • Emergent governance practices beyond formal rules (e.g., informal coordination, adaptive enforcement, negotiated control)
  • AI-driven enforcement and adaptive governance (e.g., automated compliance monitoring, fraud detection, dynamic rule implementation)

2. Boundary choices and the strategic reconfiguration of distribution ecosystems

  • How firms navigate shifting boundaries between proprietary infrastructures, third-party marketplaces, and hybrid configurations
  • Experimental and transitional forms of direct–indirect–hybrid distribution under platform dependence
  • Governance implications of coordinating online and offline channels within platform-mediated systems
  • Boundary decisions under AI-enabled intermediation (e.g., AI-based pricing tools, automated advertising systems)

3. Ecosystem power, dependence, and the micro-foundations of value capture

  • How governance mechanisms redistribute bargaining power and strategic discretion across ecosystem actors
  • Vendor strategies for managing dependence, asymmetry, and multi-homing under algorithmic control
  • Long-term consequences of marketplace participation for autonomy, growth trajectories, and competitive positioning
  • Strategic implications of algorithmic visibility and attention allocation (e.g., ranking and recommendation regimes)

4. Capabilities, alliances, and organizational learning under platform governance

  • How firms build governance-specific capabilities to operate under rule-based and algorithmic coordination
  • Alliances, relational contracts, and tacit learning as complements or substitutes for formal governance
  • Co-evolution of corporate transformation and ecosystem-level change in platform settings
  • Learning mechanisms for adapting to AI-enabled governance and platform policy changes

5. AI-enabled governance and the transformation of managerial control

  • How algorithmic and generative-AI systems reshape monitoring, ranking, enforcement, and coordination practices
  • Managerial sense-making, learning, and resistance in the adoption of AI for governance and ecosystem management
  • Strategic consequences of opacity, automation, and explainability for trust, legitimacy, and accountability
  • Ethical and societal implications of AI-enabled governance (e.g., fairness, contestability, transparency)
  • The impact of GenAI on ranking algorithms
  • Governance of cross-border data in platforms

6. Ecosystem orchestration, global expansion, and institutional complexity

  • Governance challenges in platform-enabled global value chains and cross-border ecosystems
  • Orchestration strategies for resilience, reconfiguration, and ecosystem renewal under technological turbulence
  • Strategic responses to regulatory fragmentation and institutional pluralism in digital marketplaces
  • AI-enabled orchestration capabilities and ecosystem coordination across borders

Deadline and Submission Details

The submission will open May 10, 2027

The submission deadline for all papers is July 10, 2027

The publication date of this special issue is January 31, 2028

To submit your research, please visit the Scholar One manuscript portal. https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jsma 

To view the author guidelines for this journal, please visit the journal’s page. https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/jsma 

Contact the Guest Editor:

Ciro Troise, Department of Management, University of Turin, Ciro.troise@unito.it 

Leave a comment

Filed under academia, Agentic AI, AI, Corporate Governance, digital, digital media, digital transformation, ecommerce, internet technologies, internet technologies and society, technology

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

June 23, 2021 · 6:15 pm

Customers are always right, even after their shopping cart checkout!

Photo by CardMapr.nl on Unsplash

The outbreak of COVID-19 and its preventative measures have led several businesses and consumers to change their shopping behaviors. Many individuals have inevitably reduced their human-to-human interactions in physical service environments and were increasingly relying on the adoption of digital media and mobile devices, including smart phones and tablets for their shopping requirements.

Consumers as well as businesses are benefiting of faster connections as the loading speeds of these devices is one of the critical determining factors as to whether visitors may (or may not) be willing to browse through e-commerce websites or apps, to proceed to check out, and to lay down their credit cards.

Advances in technological capabilities have improved the consumers’ online shopping experiences. As a result, more businesses are benefiting from the expertise of online marketplaces to deliver personalized services to their customers. For instance, Amazon provides product recommendations to its visitors, that are based on their previous searches.

Ecommerce giants utilize machine learning technologies to segment consumers by geographical location, age and gender, buying habits, total expenditure, and more. They capture data from online users, including their browsing and purchase histories. They distinguish between profitable, loyal customers, price-sensitive customers, and identify those who are likely to abandon their shopping carts.

Prospective consumers will usually compare a wide variety of products and their corresponding prices, in different virtual marketplaces, before making their purchase decision. They will probably check out the consumer reviews to confirm the reputation and trustworthiness of online merchants. At times, they will not be in a position to confirm the legitimacy of certain websites and to determine if it is safe to disclose their payment details to anonymous vendors.

A few websites may require consumers to join their mailing list. They may expect them to provide their email addresses, that they may share with third parties. As a result, consumers could receive unwanted ads and scams in their inboxes. Moreover, they may experience phishing and spoofing. Therefore, shopping web pages should use SSL certificates to prove that their transactions are safe and secure.

Furthermore, e-commerce websites ought to feature accurate, timely and reliable content. They have to be as transparent as possible with online users. They should clarify their terms and conditions as well as their refund policies. The smallest thing that’s out of place in their e-commerce pages could rapidly erode the customers’ trust in their products and services.

Online users cannot inspect (or try) their chosen products until they receive them. They may experience delays in the delivery of their shopping items, particularly, if they get lost, detoured or delivered in the wrong address. Once they receive the product they ordered, they may decide to return it, if for some reason they are not satisfied by its quality. In this case, they could (or could not) be reimbursed for incurring shipping and packaging costs. Shopping websites are increasingly offering synchronous communications facilities to enhance their personalized services through web chat facilities that enable instantaneous conversations with online users.

This development has significantly improved the consumers’ perceptions about the service quality of e-commerce websites and their satisfaction levels. They also increased the chances of their repeat purchases. In sum, this contribution suggests that online businesses and marketplaces should identify the critical success factors that are differentiating e-commerce websites from one another. The most popular online marketplaces are capable of attracting repeat consumers through a consistent delivery of personalized customer service, thereby increasing their sales potential and growth prospects

This research confirmed that the consumers’ satisfaction with e-commerce websites has a significant effect on their loyalty as well as on their electronic word-of-mouth publicity. This is an important finding, considering that there are several shopping websites and online marketplaces where consumers can find identical or alternative products. In this case, the respondents suggested that e-commerce websites delivered good value to them and that they triggered their loyal behaviors. The research participants indicated that they were satisfied with the quality of the shopping websites and with their electronic services.

This study showed that customers were intrigued to share their positive or negative experiences with products and/or services with other online users. Hence, they were willing to cocreate online content for the benefit of prospective consumers. Many customers are increasingly voicing their opinions and recommendations through qualitative reviews and/or quantitative ratings to support other individuals in their purchase decisions. They may either encourage or discourage others from shopping from a particular vendor and/or website.

This research confirmed that the online users’ satisfaction levels with the service quality of the e-commerce website relied on different factors, including website attractiveness, functionality and security as well as on consumer order fulfillment, during and after a purchase. The websites’ designs and layouts can capture their visitors’ attention and may possibly improve the online consumers’ experiences during their purchase transactions.

The e-commerce websites’ appearance and their functionality may entice online users to continue browsing through their content and to revisit them again, in the future. Online users would be satisfied if the e-commerce websites are informative, useful and easy to use. They utilize shopping websites to access relevant content on the attributes and features of products, including consumer reviews. Therefore, the technical functionality of these websites’ inventory systems should feature accurate and timely information on the availability of items as well as on their prices and costs of delivery.

In this day and age, shopping websites should provide approximate shipping dates, estimated delivery times, et cetera. Online sellers should also establish clear information on their returning policies. They may direct online users and past consumers to frequently answered questions, and/or to chatbots. Alternatively, they may offer webchat facilities to engage with their valued customers, in real time.

Key Takeaway

Although there are many studies that have explored the service quality of e-commerce websites during a purchase transaction, only a few of them have focused on consumer fulfillment (and on their after-sales services). The findings from this research reported that timely deliveries, and the provision of personalized services have a highly significant effect on consumer satisfaction and loyalty.

Service providers ought to meet and exceed their customers’ expectations in different stages of their order fulfilment in online retailing contexts. They ought to deliver the ordered items as expeditiously as possible, to improve their service quality. Online retailers should respond to consumer enquiries, in a timely manner. This way, they can increase consumer satisfaction, minimize complaints and reduce the likelihood of negative criticism (and damaging e-WOM) in review websites and social media.

________________________________________________

This is an excerpt of my latest academic article that was published in the Journal of Strategy and Management. It is available here: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JSMA-02-2021-0045/full/html

A prepublication version is available through ResearchGate.

Leave a comment

Filed under Business, digital media, ecommerce, Marketing, online, Small Business, Web

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

January 10, 2014 · 8:25 pm

Consumer Behavioural Attitudes: Implications for eTourism

online

Last month, the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management in collaboration with Elsevier organised the 2nd World Research Summit for Tourism and Hospitality in Orlando. During this inspiring event, one of the keynote speeches featured some interesting findings from a national US survey entitled; ‘The Portrait of American Travellers’. This quantitative study consisted of 2,511 informants (who reportedly were active leisure travellers in 2013); who reside in households with an annual income of $50,000 or more (they also included “affluent travellers” with an annual income over $125,000); who have taken at least one leisure trip of 75 miles or more from home during the previous 12 months (who have used overnight accommodations).

The survey, which was conducted during February 2013, has provided an in-depth examination of the impact of the current economic environment, prevailing social values, and emerging media habits on the travel behaviour of Americans. Unlike most surveys in the travel category this particular study explained how consumers plan, purchase and share information about their travel experiences. It also revealed some of the underlying motivations that often influence travel decisions. Respondents were selected randomly and screened before they voluntarily participated in a 45-minute online survey. The study indicated that all tests of statistical significance were made at the 95 percent level of confidence.

In a nutshell, this American study has shown that the latest advances in technological developments and additional sources of information are increasingly influencing the tourists’ choice of tourism destinations. Apparently, travellers are becoming more frugal in their purchase decisions. They are often making smarter options, seeking better value and good deals in return for their money. Travel shopping sites such as Kayak and Dealbase have gained in popularity and are now used to make travel reservations by 28 percent of travellers. Interestingly, this figure rose from a mere 15 percent in 2010. Meanwhile, six in 10 leisure travellers (58 percent) typically use an online travel agency (OTA) such as Expedia, Travelocity or Orbitz to research travel. Yet, at the same time the use of OTAs to make travel reservations is down from 66 percent in 2010 to 58 percent in 2013.

Evidently, the tourism and hospitality enterprises have become cautious in pricing their products (and services) and they often resort to revenue management tactics. This study suggests that travellers are planning to spend slightly more on travel / vacations as 82 percent of the informants have indicated that they are planning to take as many (or even more) trips in 2014 when compared to last year.

Some of the most significant results of this study include:

  • Low Cost versus Legacy Carriers: Since the cost of travel remains a major issue in influencing leisure travel preferences, it follows that half of all leisure travellers (47%) prefer travelling on a low-cost carrier. Only three in ten (30%) prefer to fly on a full-service carrier. However, one-quarter (23%) have no preference. And it should be noted that leisure travellers are significantly more likely to prefer a low-cost carrier today than in previous years – in 2010 only 42% favoured such carriers.
  • Digital Marketing: More than eight in ten leisure travellers use the internet to either obtain travel information (87%) or make travel reservations (83%). 54 percent have downloaded airline branded apps, followed by hotel branded apps (38 percent), and destination guides (27 percent).
  • E-Commerce: More leisure travellers now access the internet via a smartphone (62%) than from the office (59%). Four in ten (43%) also now access the internet from a tablet. Access to the internet via tablets jumped from 7% of all leisure travellers in 2011 to 43% in 2013.
  • Mobile E-Commerce: Smartphone usage among travellers has nearly tripled since 2010, and the act of downloading travel-related applications has also increased dramatically – from 19 percent in 2010 to 36 percent in 2013. Among travellers who have downloaded travel related apps,
  • Social Media: Only 17% of leisure travellers with household incomes over $250,000 have confidence in the information read or seen on a social media site about potential travel destinations. This is significantly lower than the percentage of those with lower household incomes; 25% of leisure travellers with household incomes of $50,000–$124,999 and 21% with household incomes of $125,000–$249,999 have confidence in social media when considering vacation destinations.
  • Word of Mouth. Eight out of ten travellers (82 percent) expressed confidence in the recommendations of friends and family members when considering vacation destinations, while six in ten (58 percent) turned to online advisory sites such as Yelp or TripAdvisor.com. Approximately four in ten travellers (41 percent) are confident in consumer reviews read on a blog, while slightly less (39 percent) are confident in articles found in newspapers, magazines, TV and radio.
  • Going Green for Green. Though eight out of 10 leisure travellers (79 percent) describe themselves as environmentally conscious, just 10 percent are willing to pay higher rates/fares for environmentally-friendly travel services, and only one in 10 (11 percent) has selected an environmentally-friendly travel service supplier who demonstrates environmental responsibility. Four in 10 (44 percent) indicated that they would probably choose an environmentally-friendly travel supplier who expresses concern about the environment over one who does not.
  • Consumer Outlook: Three-fourths of leisure travellers (73%) are optimistic about their own future and the future of their children (73%), while six in ten are optimistic about the future of their job (62%) or company (61%).

For more information about these latest travel and tourism industry insights are also available on MMG Worldwide.

Leave a comment

Filed under Marketing

Tagged as , , , , , ,