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While academics and practitioners increasingly recognize the impacts of gamification on customer experience (CX), its role in the customer journey remains undeveloped. This article aims to identify how gamification can leverage each customer journey stage, integrate the findings into a conceptual model and propose future research opportunities.

Since CX and customer journey are interrelated concepts, the authors rely on CX research to identify research themes that provide insights to propose the conceptual model. A systematic review of 154 articles on the interplay between gamification and CX research published from 2013 to 2022 was performed and analyzed by thematic content analysis. The authors interpreted the results according to the service customer journey stages and the taxonomy of digital engagement practices.

This article identified five main thematic categories that shape the conceptual model (design, customer journey stages, customer, technology and context). Gamification design can support customer value creation at any customer journey stage. While gamification can leverage brand engagement at the pre-service stage by enhancing customer motivation and information search, it can leverage service and brand engagement at the core and post-service stages by enhancing customer participation and brand relationships. Moreover, customer-, technology- and context-related factors influence the gamified service experience in the customer journey.

This article contributes to a conceptual integration between gamification and customer journey. Additionally, it provides opportunities for future research from a customer journey perspective.

Smart services have gained attention both among academics and practitioners, but manufacturing firms struggle in getting their new smart services extensively adopted by customers, employees and distributors. The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyse the requirements of different actors and the interconnectedness between their requirements in introducing smart services.

An embedded single-case study was conducted with a manufacturing firm and its network, including its sales and service personnel, customers and external salespeople. Data were collected via 30 in-depth interviews.

The paper advances the multi-actor perspective by identifying the requirements of key actors for introducing smart services. These requirements were divided into eight categories: value of smart services, reliability of smart services, competence for smart services, data security and management, attitude towards services, reliance, knowledge of installed base of equipment and services and service reputation. The findings reveal the interconnectedness of different actors’ requirements for introducing new smart services and how discussion and relationships between actors affected their requirements.

The findings represent a comprehensive template of requirements, as well as mapping the interconnectedness of actors’ requirements, serving as a practical guideline for managers.

This study characterises the introduction of smart services as a multi-dimensional, interconnected effort by manufacturing firms and their networks. It shows that service introduction cannot be viewed as manufacturer’s development task or customers’ adoption decision only. Propositions are offered on how multiple actors’ viewpoints can be combined to achieve success in introducing smart services.

The study focuses on micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) perceptions about using Fintech instruments to meet their financial requirements.

Methodology: The research utilises a quantitative method, which entails collecting primary data from 400 participants using an organised questionnaire. Chi-square tests, principal component analysis and multiple linear regression are some of the statistical tools utilised to analyse the findings.

Findings: The study’s findings indicate that only a small percentage of business owners know that Fintech instruments can be a source of financing for their companies. In addition, the items utilised in the research led to the generation of three different aspects: banking, MSME and Fintech.

Originality: The previous study indicates that several scholars have focused on various facets of the application and utilisation of Fintech. In the category of digital payments, the total transaction value is anticipated to reach $8.49 trillion in 2022. By 2027, it is expected that the entire transaction value will have increased by 12.31 per cent each year (CAGR 2022–2027), totaling US$15.17 trillion. Digital commerce is expected to have a total transaction value of US$5.49 trillion in 2022, making it the market’s largest segment. On the other hand, there isn’t much research that concentrates on developing countries, and the standards those studies need to meet are relatively stringent. In the context of MSMEs, this is an innovative approach taken towards the State of Punjab.

Need: Fintech services have an important role in bringing about significant change by providing innovative financial services, addressing credit gaps and reshaping how financial services are delivered. Fintech instruments are gaining very high popularity in terms of functions and novelty and can be predicted as the future of operations in the financial sector. Moreover, Fintech instruments can be seen to have a close connection to the MSME-guided programmes. Thus, it would be pretty interesting to note if there lies a need for the optimum implications of Fintech in MSMEs and upcoming start-ups.

Technology-enabled business-to-business (B2B) services contribute the largest share to GDP growth and are fundamental for an economy’s value creation. This article aims to identify key service- and digital technology-driven B2B innovation modes and proposes a research agenda for further exploration.

This conceptual paper adopts a techno-demarcation view on service innovation, encompassing three core dimensions: service offering (the service product, or the “what”), service process (the “how”) and service ecosystem (the “who/for whom”). It delineates the implications of three digital technologies – the internet-of-things (IoT), intelligent automation (IA) and digital platforms – for service innovation across these core dimensions in B2B markets.

Digital technology has immense potential ramifications for value creation by reshaping all three core dimensions of service innovation. Specifically, IoT can transform physical resources into reconfigurable service products, IA can augment and automate a rapidly expanding array of service processes, while digital platforms provide the technical and organizational infrastructure for the integration of resources and stakeholders within service ecosystems.

This study suggests an agenda with six themes for further research, each linked to one or more of the three service innovation dimensions. They are (1) new recurring revenue models, (2) service innovation in the metaverse, (3) scaling up service innovations, (4) ecosystem innovations, (5) power dependency and lock-in effects and (6) security and responsibility in digital domains.

The socioeconomically deprived segment called bottom of pyramid lives in extreme resource-constrained environments and is being excluded from having access to many services. This study aims to investigate the role played by virtual engagement platforms in bringing well-being to base of the pyramid (BoP) customers. This study also uses transformative service research and service ecosystem-based approach.

The study uses qualitative approach. Data was collected and analyzed through 16 in-depth interviews with BoP service actors.

Present study explains the role played by virtual engagement platforms as an intermediator between farmers and the service entity. Herein, it may be noted that the role of virtual platforms contributes to the well-being of the BoP community.

The authors’ research work broadens service organizations’ reach by better serving people in the BoP, which ultimately helps in removing unfairness and establishes service inclusion.

Identifying the complementary effects of ride-sharing on public transit is critical to understanding the potential value of growing partnerships between public transit agencies and ride-sharing platforms. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether and how ride-sharing services complement public transit.

Taking advantage of a natural experiment whereby subway Line 2 opened after the entry of ride-sharing services in Xiamen, this study uses a difference-in-differences approach to identify the complementary effects of ride-sharing on public transit based on a proprietary fine-grained trip-level data set from a large ride-sharing platform.

This study obtained the encouraging finding that ride-sharing has a significant complementary effect on the subway, as the number of ride-sharing pickups and drop-offs at subway stations increased by 130% and 117.9%, respectively, after the subway opening. Moreover, mechanism analysis shows that the complementary effect of ride-sharing services is stronger when connection distance is short (i.e. under 6 km) and when the transportation availability is limited (i.e. at night or in the areas with low transit supply and low population density).

The findings provide guidelines for promoting cooperation between public transit agencies and ride-sharing platforms to build an efficient and sustainable urban transport system.

This study is the first to examine the complementary effect of ride-sharing services on public transit via unique fine-grained ride-sharing trips data, and further reveal the underlying mechanism behind this effect.

As the world is becoming more volatile and uncertain, organizations face much complexity in their daily operations. Further, there is a much ambiguity in business operations to achieve the effective utilization of resources. The work optimizes a novel constraint programming model approach of the utilization of shuttle services vehicle while considering cost savings, employee wellbeing and other real an Information Technology enabled service (ITES) industry constraints.

The present work considers a novel extension of the vehicle routing problem related to the shuttle service operation in an ITES industry in VUCA context. Additionally, the model considers the women safety aspects, which engages the company to provide a security guard for women employees in the night shift.

Numerical experiments were conducted on real instances data of ITES industrial partner. The results show that the vehicle utilization increased from 75% up to 96% while ensuring in parallel the wellbeing of employees and women safety during the night shift. Finally, the proposed model is converted to a decision support application allowing ITES partner to plan employees shuttle service operations efficiently.

Study has evaluated the shuttle services optimization for ITES industry using data from industrial which makes it a unique contribution to literature in shuttle operations. Further, the study used constraint programming to evaluate the vehicle utilization and security allocation, thereby introducing new parameter on security allocation in open VRP problem.

Employee training and learning have transformed over the years. The movement from classroom training to the blended format represents the magnitude of this evolution. This has placed much attention on self-regulated learning. This study aimed to understand the individual and organizational mechanisms that sustain the formal learning process in organizations. It explored the goals the organizations and employees strive to achieve by investing in learning. Through this, the authors investigated how technology assistance makes learning more goal-oriented, despite the possibility of different goals for different stakeholders. They also examined how person-job fit can be achieved in employee training.

The study adopted a grounded theory-based inductive approach using a qualitative inquiry that used in-depth interviews of employees working in the Indian IT/ITES sector. This sector is knowledge-intensive and engages in constant skill development. A content analysis of the interview transcripts unraveled the most relevant themes from the participants' discussion.

Individual learners use dimensions of self-regulated learning to set and achieve goals such as better performance and career development. On the other hand, organizations use learning support mechanisms such as better access and flexibility to direct employee learning behavior to achieve organizational goals. Focusing on goal congruence leads to better achievement of results. Goal congruence also implies good person-organization fit.

This research established how aligning individual and organizational mechanisms can help achieve training goals that ultimately contribute to organizational performance. The study differentiated itself by investigating training goal setting and goal achievement at two levels – organizational and individual – using a qualitative approach. It also showed how goal congruence is vital in improving organizational performance and how technology-enabled training practices rely on self-regulated learning and help achieve goal congruence.

Tourists must possess technological competence, as technology becomes increasingly ubiquitous in travel. However, few studies have investigated tourists’ technological competence (TTC). Thus, this study aims to develop a valid and reliable scale for measuring TTC.

In the development of the scale, the authors first reviewed the literature and consulted experts to formulate an initial set of items. The items were then reduced using exploratory factor analysis, and the measures were validated through confirmatory factor analysis. Two distinct sets of data were collected to develop and validate the TTC scale.

The final scale has 21 items and five factors: searching and booking for travel information online, using self-service systems, operating VR/AR technologies, using apps for travel and using technology at tourist destination. After analyzing the reliability, construct validity, criterion-related validity and known-group validity, the TTC scale has been established as a measurement tool with acceptable reliability and validity.

The authors proposed the concept of technological competence in tourists and developed a scale to measure it. In addition to filling research gaps, understanding the items relating to TTC can help promote tourism education in the digital and technological age and provide reference for those developing technological services at tourist destinations.

随着科技在旅行中的应用普及, 游客必须具备科技使用能力。然而, 关于游客科技使用能力（TTC）的研究很少。因此, 本研究开发了一个有效可靠的量表来衡量TTC。

在量表的开发中, 我们首先回顾了文献, 并咨询专家, 制定了一组初始测量项目。然后通过探索性因素分析缩减项目, 并通过验证性因素分析验证了测量。我们收集了两组不同的数据来开发和验证TTC量表。

最终的量表包含21个项目和5个因子：在线搜索和预订旅行信息, 使用自助服务系统, 操作虚拟现实/增强现实技术, 使用旅行应用程序, 以及在旅游目的地使用科技。在分析可靠性、构造效度、标准相关效度和已知群体效度后, TTC量表已被确定为具有可接受的可靠性和效度的测量工具。

我们提出了游客的科技使用能力概念, 并开发了一个用于衡量的量表。除了填补研究空白外, 了解与游客科技使用能力相关的项目可以帮助推动数字化和技术时代的旅游教育, 并为那些开发旅游目的地科技服务的人提供参考。