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This paper aims to investigate the effect of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled checkouts on consumers’ purchase intent and evaluations of the retailing atmosphere. It also offers novel findings pertaining to the mediating role of arousal and moderation by innovativeness importance on consumers’ responses toward AI-enabled checkouts.

Three pilot studies, two field studies and one online experiment featuring 1,567 respondents were conducted by manipulating checkout methods.

AI-enabled checkouts lead to a higher level of arousal, which, in turn, yields more favorable store atmosphere evaluations and higher purchase intent. Furthermore, the positive effect of AI-enabled checkouts is moderated by consumers’ innovativeness importance.

This research contributes to the emerging body of AI research and demonstrates a novel perspective by illuminating that under certain circumstances, AI-enabled checkouts lead to more positive outcomes relating to store atmosphere evaluations and purchase intent, as well as the unintended effect of heightened arousal.

This study shows how marketers and practitioners can promote consumers’ evaluations and patronage likelihood effectively by harnessing AI-enabled checkouts for those who consider innovativeness as important.

This research documents the novel findings of how and when AI-enabled checkouts garner more favorable consumer responses.

The objective of this short research-informed, practitioner-orientated paper is to provide a viewpoint on interactive marketing pre and post COVID-19.

This is a conceptual article designed to articulate a viewpoint that despite COVID-19 the strategic considerations that marketers need to make remain unchanged.

As a result of the pandemic, there is much more obvious use of interactivity in other, aligned functions such as sales and customer services. The effectiveness of interactive marketing will only be increased by having focus on the fundamental roles of the marketing discipline, strategy and segmentation, and understanding customers at the individual level. We also need reminding briefly that the rules of competition had changed well before the COVID-19 pandemic. The traditional make and sell model has been substantially replaced by new technology-enabled organisations without the restrictions of high fixed costs and cloying bureaucracy. Customers can now search for and evaluate products and services independent of suppliers and now have as much information about suppliers as suppliers have of customers. This is the backcloth against which marketers face the challenges at the beginning of 2021. We conclude that there is a great future ahead. There is no reason why the best of interactive marketing will not be capable of building relationships that are great for customers, great for the people who create them, great for all stakeholders and great for the environment.

This is a practitioner viewpoint outlining the view that COVID-19 has not had as great of an impact on interactive marketing practice as technological change has and that interactive marketing will continue to develop after COVID-19 has receded.

The purpose of this paper is to articulate the impact of COVID-19 on marketing. It will shift from “physical first” to “digital first,” and from “selling to serving” the customers. This will impact all 4 Ps of marketing, as well as branding and innovation.

It is a conceptual paper based on literature review. The underlying construct used is transaction cost economics (TCE).

Using TCE, the paper finds that both consumers and marketers are very willing to shift to e-commerce and digital platforms which are both convenient, as well as cost-effective. Also, customer support organization will become a strategic advantage in interactive marketing.

This is an original paper written specifically for the special issue on the post-pandemic shock.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic unprecedentedly shocks the market. Little is known about the impact of COVID-19 on brand engagement across country-of-origin (COO) and country-of-market (COM). To address the gap, this study examines how the spread of the COVID-19 affects consumer brand engagement on social media for global brands through the mechanisms of the COO and consumer animosity.

The authors collect consumer engagement activity data from Facebook for eight global smartphone brands and match it with the COVID-19 statistics. Ordinary least square (OLS) models are used to estimate the impact on global brands brought by the spread of the COVID-19.

The results show that consumer brand engagement decreases for all brands in a COM as the number of confirmed COVID-19 new cases increases in the COM. Consumer brand engagement decreases for a brand across all COM as the number of confirmed COVID-19 new cases increases in the brand’s COO. If a brand’s COO is imputed for the pandemic, its consumer brand engagement will receive additional negative impacts across all COM.

This study enriches the COO literature by showing how the spread of a pandemic affects consumer brand engagement via COO and discovers the moderating role of consumer animosity.

“Contactless service” refers to the use of technology in providing products or services without a salesperson. This study explores the mechanism underlying Millennial and Generation Z (M/Z generations) consumers' preference for contactless service over salespersons in retail stores. In addition, this study tests differences between the M/Z generations.

The researchers predict characteristics to be antecedents of young consumer's preference for contactless service over salespersons and that the effects are mediated by technology self-efficacy. Next, a moderating variable (perceived consumer conformity) is added in the path between technology self-efficacy and the preference for contactless service. The hypotheses are tested among 142 Gen Z and 137 Millennial respondents.

The results show that M/Z generations’ characteristics significantly influence the preference for contactless service, except for security seeking. Also, interests in new technology and safety seeking are perceived higher by M/Z generations. The influence of technology self-efficacy on the preference for contactless service is moderated by social conformity.

As retail technology rapidly develops, the service industry is expected to change from the past, where salespersons played an important role, to contactless services. This study has academic and practical values, for the authors clarify the underlying psychological mechanisms of why young consumers prefer retail technology rather than communication with salespersons.

During these unprecedented times, acts of charity are deemed essential to help individuals in need and support the social safety net. Given the importance of prosocial behavior for survival through the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, the authors investigate the effects of partitioning experiential consumption and self-construal on consumer responses.

Based on the literature on partitioning and self-construal, the findings across three experimental studies provide novel insights into the interplay between partitioning and self-construal, and offer psychological processes on prosocial and behavioral intention.

Individuals with predominantly independent (vs. interdependent) self-construals and those primed with independent (vs. interdependent) self-construals showed higher prosocial intention when the experiential product ad was in an aggregated (vs. partitioned) format. The fit between the type of format and self-construal leads to the high control coping mechanism, and ultimately prosocial intention.

Partitioning experiential consumption has not been directly examined using self-construal, providing novel insights into consumer reactions during the pandemic. This paper provides practical implications to practitioners and researchers to better understand and adapt to shifting digital consumption patterns.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the related closures and lockdowns have changed how consumers shop for products and how they consume them. In this paper, the authors focus on how customers' journeys from the awareness stage down to purchase and loyalty stages have been impacted by the pandemic across different product categories and markets and how they affect the same post-pandemic. The authors propose directions for future research based on our analysis.

Analyzing the components of customer utility, the authors provide the basis for the rapid shift towards online and digital touchpoints and the nature of emerging interactions between firms and consumers. The authors highlight those areas where changes could be permanent.

The authors show why some of the changes due to the Covid-19 pandemic could be permanent and irrevocable and what this implies for firms' strategies to acquire, retain, and grow their business with their customers.

The authors highlight why omnichannel strategies are the way for firms to thrive in the post-pandemic marketplace, and outline areas for future research that will allow researchers to examine how customer journeys will evolve post-pandemic.