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The purpose of this study is to examine how phygital luxury experiences can be generated from mobile-mediated service activities while enabling luxury apparel shoppers to attain status goals and hedonic goals. Phygital luxury experiences are defined in this context as shopping experiences that blend the participative and immersive components of mobile and ubiquitous media with physical luxury servicescapes.

This conceptual research draws on activity theory from the field of human-computer interaction to produce an activity-centric model of phygital luxury experiences. By drawing on activity theory, the authors develop research propositions and build a conceptual model. The conceptual model probes how phygital luxury experiences can be generated from mobile-mediated service activities that enable luxury apparel shoppers to attain status goals and hedonic goals. In turn, service activities are proposed to meld with luxury shopping goals when mobile devices allow luxury apparel shoppers to participate in community-, rules-, and labor-based service activities.

First, the conceptual model demonstrates that social validation and personalization are status and hedonic drivers for community-based service activities (e.g. content-sharing and multiplatform storytelling). Second, special privileges and new comforts are status and hedonic drivers for rules-based service activities (e.g. engaging in pseudo-webrooming, pseudo-showrooming, and seamless and on-demand resources). Third, know-how and domination are status and hedonic drivers for labor-based service activities (e.g. adopting self-service technologies and smart or intelligent displays).

This conceptual model contributes to the well-documented need for research on interactive luxury strategies and luxury retail innovation. Overall, these service activities provide luxury brands and shoppers new opportunities for building elite communities, bending store rules, and altering the division of labor within physical stores. At the same time, this model shows that exclusivity and allure of luxury consumption can be reproduced through luxury apparel shoppers' embodied interactions with salespeople and relevant audiences in connected store environments.

Modern slavery is a humanitarian problem that affects global supply chains. Given the increasing pressures from legislature, consumers and investors, firms have a growing interest in eliminating forced labor and modern slavery from their supply chains. However, the impact of modern slavery on firm performance has not been shown before. This paper aims to investigate the impact of modern slavery allegations on companies’ operational performance. It also looks at the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts with respect to modern slavery.

The authors collect news articles on modern slavery in the global supply chains. The authors use an event study and use a robust matching method to measure the operational impact of modern slavery allegations. The authors also analyze the effects of media coverage and CSR practices on the relationship between allegations and firm performance.

The results show that modern slavery allegations do have a negative impact on performance, but this impact does not last long. The authors also show that strong CSR practices help firms mitigate the negative effect of these allegations.

Because the issue is hidden, as a result limited data, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to retest the proposed propositions in the future.

The paper includes implications for the development of socially responsible supply chains and financial impact.

This paper presents the first empirical research investigating the impact of modern slavery allegations on companies’ operational performance.