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The recent pandemic period (COVID-19), while negatively impacting many companies, has contributed to the growth and adoption of online platforms such as marketplaces and e-commerce. This environment has led many companies, which previously acted only through offline channels, to adopt new technologies and online channels and develop new e-commerce strategies. Small and micro enterprises are most vulnerable due to their limited resources and lack of capabilities. For this reason, the main objective of this paper is to unveil the e-commerce implementation capabilities that micro and small enterprises should build and the challenges they must face when managing an e-commerce strategy.

The authors adopted an inductive qualitative research design approach focused on multiple case studies. The firms operate in the food and beverage industry.

The findings identify several e-commerce implementation capabilities that micro and small enterprises operating in the food and beverage industry should build to manage e-commerce strategies. These are related to outsourcing management, multichannel management, time management, internal stock management and marketplace choice. Moreover, the paper identifies key e-commerce implementation challenges these firms must cope with. These regard distribution management, potential loss of control, fresh product management and lack of resources, time and capabilities.

This research shows that proper capacity management in the implementation of micro and small enterprises e-commerce strategies is critical to achieving efficient results and preventing challenges that threaten such strategies. The research offers guidelines and frameworks for micro and small enterprises to understand how to manage e-commerce and face its challenges.

This study aims to examine consumers’ perception of artificial intelligence (AI) and AI marketing communication.

Twenty in-depth interviews were conducted to collect data and phenomenological reduction was used to analyze data.

Findings suggest that consumers’ interpretation of AI is multidimensional and relational with a focus on functionality and emotion, as well as comparison and contrast between AI and human beings; consumers’ perception of voice-assisted AI centers on the aspects of function, communication, adaptation, relationship and privacy; consumers consider AI marketing communication to be unavoidable and generally acceptable; and consumers believe that AI marketing communication to be limited in its effect on influencing their evaluation of products/brands or shaping their consumptive behaviors.

According to the authors' knowledge, this study is the first research project to gauge consumers' perception on AI and AI marketing communication.