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The purpose of this paper is to substantiate the importance of an educational platform for digital modernization of modern Russia’s regions in Industry 4.0 and to determine the functions and conceptual foundations of organization of regional market of educational services for execution of functions for stimulation of digital modernization of Russia’s regional economy.

The authors use the method of regression analysis for studying the influence of the indicators of adaptation of the market of educational services to the conditions of Industry 4.0 on efficiency of digital modernization of economy of the regions of the Volga Federal District of the Russian Federation as of late 2018-early 2019. The information and empirical basis of the paper is materials of the index “Digital Russia” of the Moscow School of Management “Skolkovo.”

It is determined that the market of educational services plays an important role in the process of transition of regions of modern Russia to Industry 4.0, performing two functions: training of personnel who are capable of working with digital technologies and training of personnel who are capable of creating new digital technologies at a region’s companies. As a result, the educational platform of digital modernization of the regional economy is formed. The developed conceptual foundations of an organization of the regional market of educational services for execution of its functions on stimulating the digital modernization of Russia’s regional economy allow for three variants of the process of training of personnel: within execution of the order of partner companies in a regional technological park, within participation of the region’s companies in a tender for training of personnel and within an independent initiation of the process of training of personnel by universities based on the results of digital marketing.

The offered authors’ recommendations ensure the following advantages during the creation and development of the educational platform of a region’s digital modernization in Industry 4.0: high marketing activity of universities, direct sequence of training of personnel and improved treatment of the effectiveness of regional universities as the ratio of efficiency in personnel training to expenditures, which stimulates competition between universities and maximization of effectiveness of educational platform of a region’s digital modernization in Industry 4.0.

This chapter’s purpose is to check (prove or disprove) the argument in favour of technological discrimination of consumers of goods in the conditions of digital development, given the essence of sales conflict, its manifestations and perspectives of overcoming.

The literature review of the existing sources shows that they have an insufficient scientific basis for determining the essence of sales conflict, its manifestations, and perspectives of overcoming in the conditions of digital development and in view of technological discrimination of consumers of goods. To fill this gap in the system of scientific knowledge, the authors use the methods of comparative and correlation analysis of statistical data. The research objects are the top 10 countries from the G20, Latin America, the Caribbean, China, and the United States, which have the highest level of development of online trade and digitalization.

The authors perform an overview of the facts that determine that, from a scientific point of view, there are arguments in favour of technological discrimination of consumers of goods in the conditions of digital development from the position of the emergence of sales conflicts between companies and consumers of online goods. Modern economies are developing along the path of further increase in the technological gap between them, which could be caused by two reasons: differentiation in the level of socio-economic development of separate countries and their different susceptibility to the achievements of the digital economy and digital technologies. Countries with high innovative potential, but without effective innovative systems, undergo ‘digital transformation’. Countries with low innovative potential, but active borrowing and implementation of innovative technologies from abroad, undergo ‘digital adaptations’.

It is proved that the COVID-19 pandemic led to the change of consumer behaviour models, seriously influencing the structure of consumption. While the traditional retail trade is in stagnation, the sales volumes in the system of online commerce continue growing. Together with the development of online commerce, new types of conflicts emerge – they are caused by inequality in the level of technological and digital development of various countries of the world, as well as by discrimination of consumers.

Quality 4.0 is being presented as the new stage of quality development. However, its overlying concept and rationale are still hard to define. To better understand what different authors and studies advocate being Quality 4.0, a systematic literature review was undertaken on the topic. This paper presents the results of such review, providing some avenues for further research on quality management.

The documents for the systematic literature review have been searched on the Scopus database, using the search equation: [TITLE-ABS-KEY (“Quality 4.0”) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (Quality Management” AND (“Industry 4.0” OR “Fourth Industr*” OR i4.0))]. Documents were filtered by language and by type. Of the 367 documents identified, 146 were submitted to exploratory content analysis.

The analyzed documents essentially provide theoretical discussions on what Quality 4.0 is or should be. Five categories have emerged from the content analysis undertaken: Industry 4.0 and the Rise of a New Approach to Quality; Motivations, Readiness Factors and Barriers to a Quality 4.0 Approach; Digital Quality Management Systems; Combination of Quality Tools and Lean Methodologies and Quality 4.0 Professionals.

It was hard to find studies reporting how quality is actually being managed in organizations that already operate in the Industry 4.0 paradigm. Answers could not be found to questions regarding actual practices, methodologies and tools being used in Quality 4.0 approaches. However, the research undertaken allowed to identify in the literature different ways of conceptualizing and analyzing Quality 4.0, opening up avenues for further research on quality management in the Industry 4.0 era.

This paper offers a broad look at how quality management is changing in response to the affirmation of the Industry 4.0 paradigm.