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While every firm is striving to embrace digital transformation (DT) to form new differentiating business capabilities, there are dark sides to such initiatives, and it is essential to acknowledge, identify and address them. The purpose of this paper is to identify and emperically demonstrate the impact of such darksides of DT. While a firm's DT effort may have many dark sides, the authors identify data breaches as the most critical one and focus on proving their impact since it can inflict significant damage to the firm.

Through the lens of paradox theory, the authors argue that the DT efforts of a firm will lead to increased risk and severity of data breaches. The authors developed a one-of-a-kind longitudinal data set by combining data from multiple sources, including 3604 brands over a 10-year period, and employed a DT performance scorecard to evaluate a firm's DT effort across four key digital selling touchpoints: site, mobile, digital marketing and social media.

The findings of this study show that a firm's DT efforts pertaining to its mobile and digital marketing platforms significantly increase the likelihood and severity of a data breach event indicating that these two channels are most vulnerable and need heightened attention from firms. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the negative repercussions of some DT initiatives may be minimized as the firm becomes more innovative. The findings can help firms re-strategize their DT efforts by promoting security and also encouraging a balanced communication strategy.

This research is one of the first to identify, recognize and empirically illustrate the downsides of a DT effort that is otherwise thought to provide only benefits.

This paper aims to clarify the notion of artificial intelligence (AI), reviewing the present scope of the phenomenon through its main applications. It aims at describing the various applications while assessing the markets, highlighting some of the leading industrial sectors in the field. Therefore, it identifies pioneering companies and the geographical distribution of AI companies.

The paper builds upon an in-depth investigation of public initiatives focusing mostly on the EU. It is based on desk research, a comprehensive review of the main grey and scientific literature in this field.

The paper notes that there is no real consensus on any definition for this umbrella term, that the definition does fluctuate over time but highlights some of the main changes and advances that took place over the past 60 years. It stresses that, in spite of the hype, on both the business and consumer sides, the demand appears uncertain. The scope of the announced disruptions is not easy to assess, technological innovation associated with AI may be modest or take some time to be fully deployed. However, some companies and regions are leading already in the field.

The paper, based on desk research, does not consider any expert opinions. Besides, the scientific literature on the phenomenon is still scarce (but not the technical one in the specific research sectors of AI). Most of the data come from consultancies or government publications which may introduce some bias, although the paper gathered various, often conflicting viewpoints.

The paper gives a thorough review of the available literature (consultancies, governments) stressing the limitations of the available research on economic and social aspects. It aims at providing a comprehensive overview of the major trends in the field. It gives a global overview of companies and regions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the critical factors that drive the adoption of digital library system (DLS) in institutes located in remote India. An integrated model of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model-2 (UTAUT2) and information systems success model (ISSM) is used to evaluate the critical factors.

The survey method of research was used, and the data collected was analysed by using PLS-SEM, which proved helpful to evaluate and validate the model.

Departing from past research, where most of the factors of the UTAUT2 and ISSM were found to influence the adoption of DLS, in this context, it is noted that performance expectancy, facilitating conditions and habit were the only constructs that influenced the intention to use DLS.

The study addresses the requirement for further research in DLS domain in emerging markets. It is one of the few studies addressing DLS adoption in remote India. The findings are unique to this context, which differ from developed nations, thus, answering the call to advance UTAUT model.

This study aims to determine system quality (SQ) and information quality (IQ) characteristics of voice assistants (VA) on smartphones that are affecting users’ satisfaction and technology acceptance, and how these affect behavioral intention (BI) to use.

This study uses the integrated model of user satisfaction and technology acceptance to evaluate users’ behavioral intention to use VAs on smartphones. The model represents a causal chain from the key characteristics of SQ and IQ to beliefs and attitudes that ultimately affect use. An online survey was conducted with 75 university students, and the data was analyzed using multivariate analysis: Simple linear regression analysis and multiple regression analysis.

While SQ and IQ of VAs had stronger effects on perceived ease of use (PEU), information satisfaction and PEU showed significant influences on perceived usefulness (PU). The results supported the influence of PEU, PU, and attitude on BI to use but with lesser effect than what PU and attitude together had on BI.

The sample was drawn from a population of students at a single and small university. Although this study received 160 responses, only 75 were appropriate for analysis.

There is no research, which adopts technology acceptance and user satisfaction approaches to VAs. To measure the causal effects, this study determined system and information characteristics that could explain SQ and IQ of the current VAs on smartphones. This study tested the proposed framework within the scope of the integrated approach.

This paper aims to analyze the concept of customer experience in the marketing literature, identify its dimensions and applications in retail companies and integrate it with the concepts of touchpoints and consumer journey; some correlated concepts, such as customer delight and engagement, are also clarified, and an example of best practice customer experience management, using the beauty product company Sephora as a reference is provided.

The case analysis was based on an examination of available public documents, such as press articles, case studies and the content of beauty blogs and social media (Facebook and YouTube) from 2014 to 2017; Sephora’s social media communities (Beauty Talk, The Glossy and Sephora TV); the company’s website and mobile application; and physical stores and Sephora Flash (a mix of a physical and digital store).

Four categories emerged from the analysis, namely, to provide an enhanced omni-channel shopping experience, to reward loyalty and to bond with customers, to promote social shopping experiences and to delight customers.

The study results provide retail managers important insights for maximizing customer experience across different touchpoints and throughout the whole journey to increase customer engagement and loyalty.

The paper provides clear theoretical and practical basis for customer experience management, based on an analysis of the concepts of customer experience, delight and engagement, as well as a case analysis of a company that excels in this area.

This paper aims to introduce the concept of storygiving as a co-creation tool and provides a guideline for its successful use by luxury brand managers.

A study of Tiffany and Co.’s social media-based site and its use of stories as co-created marketing content provides us with managerial strategies applicable to luxury brands in general. The authors emphasize how luxury brands deal with co-created brand images compared to mainstream brands.

Storygiving enables consumers to share their personal experiences through narratives and provides contextualized connections among community members through shared experiences. One successful example of storygiving is Tiffany & Co.’s ‘What Makes Love True’ campaign.

Only one luxury brand was used in this case study of online co-creation and storygiving. Further research, especially comparative case studies, would expand understanding of brand image management in the age of social media and consumer empowerment.

This paper presents a strategic guideline for luxury brand managers highlighting a customer-centric insight into ways luxury brands can develop marketing strategies incorporating co-creation.

To differentiate it from storytelling, the co-creation of brand stories through consumer-generated content is known as storygiving. The use of social media marketing in the process of storygiving is a powerful tool for luxury brands. The changed narrative from the brand’s point of view to that of the brand’s community is a major point made in this research.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between being members of social media business networks and SME performance by comparing business performance between family-owned SMEs that are members and non-members of social media business networks.

The analysis empirically draws on cross-sectional data of 9,292 English and Welsh family-owned SMEs from the UK's Government Small Business Survey 2015. Propensity Score Matching (PSM) is applied to control for selection bias and differences in firm characteristics before comparing business performance, measured in terms of annual turnover, sales-growth intention and innovation between family-owned SMEs that are members and non-members of social media business networks.

The findings show that family-owned SMEs that are members of social media business networks are more likely to have higher prior turnover and to grow their sales than non-members. Also, they are more likely to report being innovative in products and processes than non-members. The empirical results acknowledge the importance of online business networks and digital social capital on enhanced family-owned business performance.

This paper is the first to explore the comparative analysis of business performance between family-owned SMEs that are members and non-members of social media business networks. This paper is important for the development of family business research by providing a comprehensive evidence-based analysis regarding the importance of online business networks to improve family-owned business performance, given the significant contribution of digital business activities to the UK economy.

With the soaring volumes of brand-related social media conversations, digital marketers have extensive opportunities to track and analyse consumers’ feelings and opinions about brands, products or services embedded within consumer-generated content (CGC). These “Big Data” opportunities render manual approaches to sentiment analysis impractical and raise the need to develop automated tools to analyse consumer sentiment expressed in text format. This paper aims to evaluate and compare the performance of two prominent approaches to automated sentiment analysis applied to CGC on social media and explores the benefits of combining them.

A sample of 850 consumer comments from 83 Facebook brand pages are used to test and compare lexicon-based and machine learning approaches to sentiment analysis, as well as their combination, using the LIWC2015 lexicon and RTextTools machine learning package.

Results show the two approaches are similar in accuracy, both achieving higher accuracy when classifying positive sentiment than negative sentiment. However, they differ substantially in their classification ensembles. The combined approach demonstrates significantly improved performance in classifying positive sentiment.

Further research is required to improve the accuracy of negative sentiment classification. The combined approach needs to be applied to other kinds of CGCs on social media such as tweets.

The findings inform decision-making around which sentiment analysis approaches (or a combination thereof) is best to analyse CGC on social media.

This study combines two sentiment analysis approaches and demonstrates significantly improved performance.

Many studies have examined the use of social media by either customers or firms, especially in developed markets. However, little is known about why young individual entrepreneurs use digital channels (DCs) as business platforms in emerging markets (EMs) and how they integrate them into their marketing activities. This paper aims to try filling this gap.

Given the exploratory nature of this research, the authors employ a qualitative approach based on a focus group (12 participants) and semi-structured interviews (8 participants) with young entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia. The authors adopted a deductive thematic analysis based on pre-determined theoretical frameworks to analyse and interpret the data.

The authors found that the young entrepreneurs mainly used Instagram, Snapchat and, to a moderate extent, YouTube as digital marketing channels for advertising purposes. However, they used WhatsApp for establishing direct contact and personalising communication with customers. The entrepreneurs used these channels because they are useful, easy to use, cost-effective, fun and widely used by local customers. The authors also found that the entrepreneurs used social media and offline channels conjointly in three main marketing activities (communication/promotion, transactions and customer service) to boost the customer purchasing process. The complementarity of social media and offline channels was found to improve brand visibility, enlarge markets and strengthen the customer relationship. However, the achievement of these benefits varied across small firms depending on the entrepreneurs' abilities in coordinating multiple channels and according to the distinctiveness of their businesses.

This study contributes to the entrepreneurial literature by extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to explain the motives behind the use of DCs amongst individual entrepreneurs. Furthermore, this paper proposes a novel theoretical framework for studying the interaction between online and offline marketing channels during the purchasing process. Through this framework, the study provides new insights into channel coordination and multi-channel customer behaviours from the entrepreneur's perspective.

This study helps understand why small firms use different DCs. Likewise, it shows how young entrepreneurs coordinate online/offline channels in a complementary manner. The findings could also help in designing appropriate programmes encouraging young entrepreneurs to use online channels and social media to enhance their business activities.

This study offers a novel attempt at explaining the use of DCs and their interaction with traditional channels from the entrepreneur's perspective and brings new insights to why and how young entrepreneurs use DCs in an emerging market.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and empirically examine the dynamic capabilities (DC) that drive the development of digital manufacturing capabilities (DMC) and the role of DMC in mediating their influence on firm performance.

Based on the dynamic capabilities view (DCV) of the firm, the authors develop a set of hypotheses that are tested through a survey of 110 managers in the manufacturing sector. The hypothesized model is tested through structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that although higher-order DC (HODC) have a strong influence on firm performance, their effects are partially mediated by the DMC that they generate, by positively affecting the extended production process.

The analysis contributes to a better understanding of the interplay between levels of the DC hierarchy by finding that DMC play an important role in translating HODC into enhanced firm performance.

By complementing the DCV with the disruptive innovation theory in a specific fast changing context, this study introduces a new construct (DMC) providing an original and considerable contribution to the literature. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first empirical study that includes and assesses all these elements together in the context of the manufacturing industry.