The New Frontiers in Digital Media Services
Special Issue call for papers: Journal of Services Management
Full Paper Deadline: October 31st, 2018
Editors: Werner Kunz, Gianfranco Walsh
The digital revolution has significantly changed our lives. Over the course of the last decades, digital technology has transformed itself in various waves (Lamberton and Stephen 2016): Starting from the beginning of Internet marketing (Boyd and Ellison 2007; Hoffman and Novak 1996; Rheingold 2000), through Web 2.0 (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010) and the rise of social media (Algesheimer et al. 2010; Jahn and Kunz 2012; Trusov et al. 2009) to the emergence of mobile devices (Falk et al. 2016; Hofacker et al. 2016; Shankar and Balasubramanian 2009).
Digital media have had a profound effect on how people communicate, connect, and collaborate with others and companies have recognized its capability for engaging with customers (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2010). Every technology wave has its own characteristics and paradigms and hence specific implications for guiding management practice. For instance, much of the current growth in service markets is technology-driven resulting in new service systems and innovative business models and processes (Huang and Rust 2013). Further, the digital and social media revolution have strengthened the importance of customer engagement, as customers become active co-producers – or destroyers – of value for companies (Leeflang et al. 2014).
Today, social media and smart mobile devices have gone mainstream and companies and non-profit organizations have gained solid experience with these new digital tools. Consequently, the question arises, what are the agenda-setting topics of the next technology wave? Are there new topics on the horizon that service researchers should be thinking about today? As digital media continue to permeate all aspects of private life and business, and digital technology keeps spawning new services, researchers need to investigate how customers interact with and use digital media. New and evolving services for mobile devices (e.g., live streaming and posting, location tracking, smarter analytics, C2C services like ride-hailing) and new technologies completely change the way we interact with and use digital media (e.g., service robots, new VR and AR technology, voice assistants) and thus deserve research attention. Researchers also should make an effort to study how service organizations can spot market opportunities in a business environment in which the technology is constantly changing.
The purpose of this special issue is to put the focus on these new research fields in digital media that are currently in its infancy. We invite research that improves our understanding of the evolving digital environment, an environment that will shape how we live and use services. Submissions might improve our understanding by: developing new theoretical frameworks, testing propositions regarding the use and management of new digital media services, explaining complex relationship within a new digital media service, or showing how to coordinate across multiple digital media for an optimal outcome for all participants. We also welcome research on potential negative societal effects of digital services. For example, home-sharing services such as AirBnB, in some cities, have contributed to scarcity of rentable property and higher rents for the local population (Cheng 2016). Services such as Uber are often associated with questionable work conditions and undercutting competition (Malhotra and Van Alstyne 2014). Such potentially harmful effects are relevant because they may detrimentally affect acceptance and thus growth of digital services.
Topics
This special issue aims to start a research program in the service research field that focuses on new and upcoming digital media services. Submissions can be conceptual or empirical (quantitative or qualitative) in nature. The topics can be approached from a consumer or business perspective or both. The main criterion for publication is that the submission has original value. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- New theories and concepts for digital media
- Value co-creation in digital media
- Cross cultural challenges of digital media
- Touch versus tech in the digital media context
- The dark side of digital media
- Smart devices and the Internet of things
- Service robots and chat bots
- Automation and artificial intelligence
- Augmentation of the customer experience
- Voice assistants
- Location tracking
- Mobile payment
- The role of photos and visuals in digital media
- Immersive video (e.g. 360 degree, Live streaming)
- Vanishing postings
- Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics
- Text-mining of digital data.
- New challenges of cloud computing
- New challenges of the customer journey in digital media
- New challenges of customer engagement with digital media
- New challenges of customer experience in digital media
- New challenges of branding and digital media
- Multi-channel management in digital media
Submission
All manuscripts submitted must not have been published, accepted for publication, or be currently under consideration elsewhere.
Authors should submit their full papers to the Guest Editors of this JOSM Special Issue on ‘The New Frontiers in Digital Media Services’ through the ScholarOne online submission system and should be made to the special issue which is identified on the journal submission site (step 5 in the submission process).
Manuscripts should be submitted in accordance with the author guidelines available on the journal homepage at http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=josm
Expected publication: Volume 31 (Issue 1) 2020
Please direct any further inquiries to the editors, listed below.
Guest Editor Contact Details
Dr. Werner Kunz
Digital Media Lab
University of Massachusetts Boston
Werner.Kunz@umb.edu
Dr. Gianfranco Walsh
University of Jena
walsh@uni-jena.de
References:
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Boyd, Danah M. and Nicole B. Ellison (2007), “Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship,” Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 13 (1), 210-30.
Cheng, Mingming (2016), “Sharing economy: A review and agenda for future research,” International Journal of Hospitality Management, 57, 60-70.
Falk, Tomas, Werner H Kunz, Jeroen JL Schepers, and Alexander J Mrozek (2016), “How mobile payment influences the overall store price image,” Journal of Business Research, 69 (7), 2417-23.
Hennig-Thurau, T, EC Malthouse, C Friege, S Gensler, L Lobschat, A Rangaswamy, and B Skiera (2010), “The Impact of New Media on Customer Relationships,” Journal of Service Research, 13 (3), 311-30.
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Jahn, B. and W. Kunz (2012), “How to Transform Consumers into Fans of Your Brand,” Journal of Service Management, 23 (3), 3-3.
Kaplan, Andreas M. and Michael Haenlein (2010), “Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media,” Business Horizons, 53 (1), 59-68.
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Malhotra, Arvind and Marshall Van Alstyne (2014), “The dark side of the sharing economy… and how to lighten it,” Communications of the ACM, 57 (11), 24-27.
Rheingold, Howard (2000), The virtual community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier: MIT press.
Shankar, Venkatesh and Sridhar Balasubramanian (2009), “Mobile marketing: a synthesis and prognosis,” Journal of interactive marketing, 23 (2), 118-29.
Trusov, Michael, Randolph E Bucklin, and Koen Pauwels (2009), “Effects of word-of-mouth versus traditional marketing: findings from an internet social networking site,” Journal of marketing, 73 (5), 90-102.
