Special Issue of the Service Industries Journal
Smart Services: Theoretical Approaches and Implications for Service Providers and Customers
Deadline: Abstract by Oct 1st, 2017
Guest Editor: Marianna Sigala, University of South Australia (Marianna.sigala@unisa.edu.au)
Guest Editor: Dimitrios Buhalis, University of Bournemouth (dbuhalis@bournemouth.ac.uk )
Editor-in-Chief: Levent Altinay, Oxford Brookes University (laltinay@brookes.ac.uk)
Information & Communication Technology (ICT) advances (such as big data, machine learning, internet of the things) are fueling the smart services evolution. Smart services enable customers not only to be offered personalized experiences at the right place, time and context, but they also empower customers to co-design and configure services according to their individual preferences, needs and expectations. Smart services enable firms to enhance their competitiveness by more effectively and pro-actively responding to the customers and travellers’ needs. At a macro level, smart services contribute to the attractiveness and competitiveness of regions, as well as to sustainable living and development, and to the well-being of local communities.
Smart services are based on ICT and the data collected and analyzed by ICT, which represent the oil of the smart economy. However, designing smart services is not a sole ICT problem. Instead, the effective provision of smart services requires: a customer-centered perspective on services and service design, including novel theoretical lenses and approaches to human behavior, culture, attitudes, profiling, decision-making; development on human and social capital, creative thinking and open innovation; appropriate ICT infrastructure and systems as well as new approaches for understanding the dynamics and the ways to integrate technologies with socio-cultural systems and institutions and design effective smart service ecosystems; new theories for understanding and predicting the processes and the factors enabling and/or inhibiting the various actors to interact and exchange resources within smart ecosystems with the purpose to co-create value; and innovative and transformational business models and strategies enabling firms to exploit the revolution of smart services.
This special issue aims to contribute to our understanding about the design, impacts, and socio-technical enablers and inhibitors of smart services at both a micro-firm and macro-ecosystem level. Special interest is also given to the continuously evolving and dynamic role of smart services in empowering smart consumers and enabling smart customer experiences in different sectors of the service industries including retailing, hospitality and travel. The special issue also welcomes theoretical, empirical, experimental, and case study research contributions. All contributions should clearly address the practical and theoretical implications of the research reported.backgrounds.
Topics of interest included, but they are not limited:
- smart transformations: innovation, creativity and business models for smart services
- smart disruptive technologies
- social, technological, economic smartness
- smart value co-creation
- smart region technologies and Open Innovation
- Internet of Everything, Big Data and Analytics for smart services
- service design of smart services
- theories and approaches for understanding smart services
- societal, cultural and economic impacts of smart services
- customer experience and smart services
- smart service ecosystems: technologies, applications and design issues
- smart services in tourism, hospitality and travel
Submission Instructions
Researchers are invited to indicate their interest in contributing to this special issue by sending a 300-word abstract of their proposed paper by October, 1 2017 to Marianna Sigala by e-mail at Marianna.sigala@unisa.edu.au
The deadline for full paper submission is December, 31 2017 for standard peer review.
Full instructions for authors are available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=fsij20&page=instructions
Publication for this special issue is summer 2018.
Editorial information
- Guest Editor: Marianna Sigala, University of South Australia (Marianna.sigala@unisa.edu.au)
- Guest Editor: Dimitrios Buhalis, University of Bournemouth (dbuhalis@bournemouth.ac.uk )
- Editor-in-Chief: Levent Altinay, Oxford Brookes University (laltinay@brookes.ac.uk)
