About the Authors

Christof Backhaus is Professor of Marketing and Head of Research at The Business School at Edinburgh Napier University. He received his PhD from the University of Muenster in Germany, and previously worked as a Professor of Marketing at Newcastle University Business School and Aston Business School. His research interest lies primarily in the fields of Retail and Services Marketing and Management, where he investigates issues around customer relationship and loyalty management, brand management and innovation management. His work in these domains has been published in key marketing journals such as the Journal of Business Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Retailing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and Psychology & Marketing.

Eirini Bazaki is a Senior Teaching Fellow in Fashion Management Marketing and MA Coordinator of Luxury and Fashion Brand Management Programmes at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. Eirini is a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy and holds a PhD in Marketing from Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, an MSc in Management Research from the University of Glasgow, an MSc Degree in Marketing Management from Aston University, and a BSc (Hons) in Sociology from the department of Social Sciences, Panteion University. Eirini research interests lie in branding and services marketing (S-D) logic for fashion and luxury brands.

Malaika Brengman holds a PhD in Applied Economics (UGent) and is an Associate Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behavior at VUB in the Business department, where she leads the research cluster “Marketing & Consumer Behavior.” Her scientific research generally focuses on the impact of store atmospherics and shopper motivations and behavior, in offline as well as online retail contexts, with a special attention to new technologies and their impact on consumer behavior. She has presented her findings globally at numerous conferences and has published her work in several well-respected international scientific journals.

Sandro Castaldo is a Full Professor of Management at Bocconi University (Italy), former Director of the Executive Education Open Course Division, and former Chairman of the Marketing Department at SDA Bocconi. He is a Scientific Director of the Channel & Retail Lab and Scientific Supervisor of the Executive Master in Marketing & Sales (Emms). He is a faculty member who presents on many master's courses and Master of Science degrees (MBA, Emms, Marketing MSc, Mimec, etc.). His current research interest is mainly on trust in channel relationships, in buyer-seller dyads, and in consumer and shopper behavior fields. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Florida, at Esade Business School, and the Universitat Autónoma of Barcelona. He is the author of many nationally and internationally published journal articles and of more than 10 books published for Egea, Il Mulino, Franco Angeli, and Edward Elgar.

Dr Scott Dacko is an Associate Professor of Marketing and Strategic Management at Warwick Business School, the University of Warwick. He has 10 years' new product development, management, and marketing experience in large and small companies in the United States. His research interests include service innovations, temporal issues in marketing strategy, and imitation strategies. He is the author of The Advanced Dictionary of Marketing and he has published in journals including Journal of Services Marketing, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Marketing Management, and the International Journal of New Product Development and Innovation Management.

Dr Laurens De Gauquier holds an MSc in Applied Economics from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he currently works as a PhD researcher and teaching assistant since October 2015. He is part of the research cluster “Marketing and Consumer Behavior” at the faculty of Social Sciences & Solvay Business School. His research pertains to the impact of VR and robotics in retail.

Marzia Del Prete is a PhD Student in Marketing Management at the Department of Economics and Statistics (DISES), University of Salerno, Italy. Her research focuses on connecting the concepts of Emotional Intelligence, Happiness and Leadership through the magnifying glass of Mindfulness and Sustainability. Her research interest is also to reinterpret these concepts in the field of Artificial Intelligence and new technologies to develop new capabilities in service ecosystems. She has over more than 10 years of management consulting experience, having previously worked as senior consultant for Deloitte Consulting, a world's leading management consulting company.

Amela Dizdarevic is PhD in Management Candidate at Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK. Within her doctoral research, Amela develops strategies how inner-city shopping areas can enhance their attractiveness by embracing digital opportunities. Her passion for the investigation of innovative technologies in retailing can be traced back to her marketing and product management positions within the retail and technology companies Media-Saturn and Amazon. Further, as a lecturer at THI Business School, Ingolstadt, Germany, she passes on her knowledge about retail information systems, business management and scientific work to (under)graduate students. Her studies have been published in scientific journals like the Marketing Review St. Gallen and numerous academic and business conferences across Europe and the USA. The British Academy of Management has honoured her research with the Best Poster Award 2017 and the Marketing and Retail SIG Best Developmental Paper Award 2019.

Alun Epps received his PhD in Marketing from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK. He is an Associate Professor in Marketing Management, MBA Director and former Research Chair at Middlesex University Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. His creative teaching repertoire includes brand management, personal and professional development, marketing communication strategy, and postgraduate dissertation coaching. Alun's pedagogical interests encompass innovation, entrepreneurship and SME management, and digital and social media marketing, as part of his agile approach to continuous learning. His research spectrum includes online and offline marketing communications, consumer behavior, internet addiction in minors, branding, and community entrepreneurship. He was recently made a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) with Advance HE (UK).

Heiner Evanschitzky is Professor and Chair of Marketing at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester (UK). Heiner received his PhD and Habilitation from the University of Muenster (Germany). Previously, he worked as Professor of Marketing at Aston University and the University of Strathclyde. He was Visiting Professor at University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), Curtin Business School (Australia), and Florida Atlantic University (USA). His research investigates interesting and relevant problems with an attempt to develop impactful conclusions. The current focus primarily lies in Retail Marketing/Management where he investigates customer inspiration and store atmospherics, customer participation, relationship marketing, and profit chain models. His work has been published in journals such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of Management, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Service Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Journal of Product Innovation Management. Heiner currently serves as Associate Editor for the British Journal of Management.

Leonora Fuxman, PhD, is a professor in the Management Department at the Peter J. Tobin College of Business at St. John's University in New York. She earned her PhD degree in Operations Management and an MA degree in Decision Sciences from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Fuxman is a well-published researcher with numerous publications in eminent publications including Production and Operations Management Journal, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Applied Business Research, International Journal of Commerce and Management, among others. Dr Fuxman research interests have evolved over two and a half decades of academic and professional work. Her research interests span areas of production and operations management, service sciences, leadership, international management, and more recently, she is engaged in research related to fashion and sustainable development.

Monica Grosso is an Associate Professor of Marketing at emlyon business school (France). She is responsible of the undergraduate course Channel & Retail Management and for several graduate courses: Marketing Management, Store Digitalization, International Retail Management, Go to market ECR, and category management. She has been a visiting professor at SDA Bocconi, Edhec Business School, and Universitat Autónoma of Barcelona. She received her PhD in Management from Bocconi University, majoring in Marketing and Innovation. Her research is focused on omnichannel retail strategy, private label and brand competition, retailers' relationship to the shopper (trust and loyalty building), and the role of trust in e-commerce. She has authored and coauthored several papers and chapters published on international level, as well as a book with Edward Elgar on Channel & Retail Management.

Andreas Kaplan is serving as Rector of ESCP Europe Business School where he also co-founded the European Center for Digital Competitiveness. His research mainly addresses analyzing and decrypting the digital sphere in general and artificial intelligence and social media in particular. With over 22,000 citations on Google Scholar, Professor Kaplan ranks among the Top 50 Business and Management authors in the world according to John Wiley & Sons. Professor Kaplan did his Habilitation at the Sorbonne and his PhD at the University of Cologne/HEC Paris. He holds a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from the École Nationale d'Administration (ENA; French National School of Public Administration), an MSc from ESCP Europe, and a BSc from the University of Munich. Additionally, Professor Kaplan was visiting PhD at INSEAD and participated in the International Teachers Programme (ITP) at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Barbara Keller is a PhD student at the University of Augsburg and a researcher at the Munich University of Applied Sciences. She studied Management at the University of Augsburg. Her research focuses on an interdisciplinary field combining Marketing Sciences with Business Information Systems and Computer Sciences. She is part of several international research groups and an invited researcher at well-known universities including Warwick Business School and University Roma Tre. She is also an invited reviewer for journals including Electronic Markets and highly reputable conferences such as HICSS.

Mathieu Lajante is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Université Laval, Québec, Canada. His research interests revolve around concepts and methods from affective and social neuroscience to investigate the role of emotion in persuasive communication, to study the impact of automated service interactions on firm customer emotional connectedness and firm's empathic capacity in service ecosystems. He is also a promoter of psychophysiology applied to marketing research. Mathieu published his work, amongst others, in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Consumer Marketing, and Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics.

Ali B. Mahmoud, PhD (Marketing), PhD (HRM), MRes (Management), MSc (Finance), BSc (Economics), FCIM, MABP, FHEA researches in the area of business psychology from an interdisciplinary angle and has published over 40 journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers. His work has appeared in outlets like the Journal of Family Studies, International Journal of Manpower, Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, International Sociology, Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, Nonprofit Management and Leadership, Media, War and Conflict, Higher Education Quarterly, and Journal of Promotion Management. Dr. Mahmoud serves as a member of the editorial advisory board at Quality Assurance in Education. Also, he is an associate editor at the International Journal of Public Sociology and Sociotherapy].

Dr Michael Möehring holds a PhD in Business Information Systems and is currently a Postdoc at the Munich University of Applied Sciences. His research was published in major Information systems conferences and journals like Electronic Markets, ECIS, PACIS, and HICSS.

Eleonora Pantano is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing (Associate Professor Level) at University of Bristol (UK). She held PhD in “Psychology of Programming and Artificial Intelligence”, MEng in Management, and PG Cert in Higher Education Teaching and Supporting Learning. She is also fellow of the Academy of Higher Education.

Her research activities mainly relate to retailing and digital marketing, with emphasis on artificial intelligence, emotional analytics, and machine learning algorithms to improve retail analytics, strategies and theories. Her findings appear in books and textbooks (Internet Retailing, Technology and Innovation for Marketing, Smart Retailing: technologies and strategies) and numerous international journals (i.e., Computers in Human Behavior, Tourism Management, Journal of Business Research, Psychology and Marketing, Journal of Retail and Consumer Services).

Ingrid Poncin is a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain and holds the PARTENAMUT-IPM-Digital Marketing Chair. She obtained her PhD from the Catholic University Faculties of Mons (FUCAM) (Emile Cornez Foundation Prize) and her HDR from the University of Lille 2. Her research focuses on the importance and measurement of affective and marketing experience and consumer behavior in the face of technologies. In this context, themes such as gamification, engagement, customer empowerment, presence, social sharing, and personalization are at the heart of its concerns. Her work has been published in several well-respected international scientific journals.

Constantinos-Vasilios Priporas, PhD, MCIM, FEMAB, is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Middlesex University Business School, UK. His research interests include consumer behavior and strategic marketing with main emphasis on retailing, tourism, and food. He has published in several international academic journals and conferences, including Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research, International Marketing Review, Journal of Business Research, Computers in Human Behavior, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, and International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management. In addition, he coauthored the book “Technology and Innovation for Marketing” and coedited the book “Market Sensing Today.” He is a member of several professional bodies and an editorial board member of the Journal of Customer Behavior and has acted as a guest editor, reviewer, and track chair in academic journals and conferences.

Prof. Rainer Schmidt is a professor of business information systems at Munich University of Applied Sciences. He holds a PhD (KIT Karlsruhe) and an engineering degree in Computer Science. His current research areas include service science, enterprise computing, business process management, social software, business/IS alignment, and the integration of these themes. Rainer Schmidt is the co-organizer of several conferences and workshops and a member of the program committee of several workshops and conferences. Rainer Schmidt is serving on the editorial boards of International Journal of Information Systems in the Service Sector and International Journal on Advances in Internet Technology. Rainer Schmidt applies his research in a number of projects and cooperation with industry.

Shehnaz Tehseen, PhD (Management), is a senior lecturer in the Department of Management, Sunway University Business School, Sunway University, Malaysia. Her research interests lie in the areas of entrepreneurship, ethnic entrepreneurship, SMEs, cultural orientations, innovation, entrepreneurial competencies, retail sector, human resource management, strategic management, marketing, tourism, and organizational behavior. She is an active researcher with 48 publications, including journal papers and conference proceedings. She is also an editorial team member of some international journals including Journal of Management Sciences, Durreesamin Journal, and Journal of Global Business Insights.

Stephanie van de Sanden (Msc, Management, VUB) started in April 2016 as a PhD researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), in the Faculty of Social Sciences & Solvay Business School within the Business research cluster “Marketing & Consumer Behavior.” She is VLAIO Baekeland mandate holder, and her research is supported by the Flemish Agency for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (VLAIO) and Digitopia N.V. (Belgian digital solution provider). Her research focuses on the strategic use of innovative digital technologies in bricks-and-mortar retailing.

Virginia Vannucci is a Post-Doc Research Fellow in Marketing at the University of Florence, Italy. Her research activities explore the impact of digital technologies on consumer behaviour and retailers’ strategies, exploring the effects of in-store human and digital touchpoints. Her researches have been presented at International conferences, such as the Annual Conference of the Academy of Marketing Science, and have appeared in International journals such as Journal of Business Research, Computers in Human Behavior, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Information Technology and People, and Journal of Global Fashion Marketing.

Tibert Verhagen is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Market Insights of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. His research interests include emerging digital technology, information systems, and store innovation. He obtained a master's degree at Utrecht University, and he completed a doctoral degree at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Tibert is cochair of the ShoppingTomorrow expert group Innovative Retail Technology and chair of the expert group Customer Experience and In-store technology of the Retail Innovation Platform. He has extensive teaching experience, has been the initiator of Master of Science programs, and is also engaged in business practices. His research has been published in journals such as Information & Management, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Computers in Human Behavior, Electronic Commerce Research, New Media & Society, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, International Journal of Information Management, Journal of Medical Internet Research, and Cyberpsychology, Behavior & Social Networking.

Vanissa Wanick holds a PhD in design from the University of Southampton, an MBA in Marketing from University Federal Fluminense (UFF), and a BA in Design at PUC-Rio. Currently, she is a researcher and teaching fellow at the University of Southampton (Winchester School of Art), teaching and researching games, diversity, culture, and sustainability education. Her research interests are multidisciplinary and include cross-cultural HCI and persuasive design, games user research methods, gamification, games for behavior change, and sustainable consumer behavior.

Jesse Weltevreden is a Professor of Digital Commerce at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS). His research interests include e-commerce, store innovation, data-driven marketing, and the future of town centers and shopping areas. He completed both his master's and doctoral degrees at Utrecht University. Jesse is the founder of the Centre for Market Insights at AUAS and the cofounder and chair of the Retail Innovation Platform, a network of Dutch and Belgian researchers with an interest in retail innovation. His latest research projects focus on the role of digital marketing for future-proofing town centers, cross-border e-commerce, the platform economy, digital transformation in the retail sector, and mobility effects of e-commerce. His research has been published in several journals, including Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management, Transportation, Environment and Planning A, and Environment and Planning B.

Kim Willems (PhD in Applied Economics: Business Engineer, UHasselt & VUB) is an Associate Professor of Marketing at VUB. Her research pertains to retail differentiation strategies. She studied among others environmental and evolutionary psychological effects of store atmospherics on customers and currently focuses her research around HCI in retailing and particularly the customer value and returns for business of smart retailing and service innovation. She has published among others in Journal of Business Research, Psychology & Marketing, Journal of Service Management, and Technological Forecasting & Social Change.