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The unprecedented changes in the marketplace induced by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant accelerated corporate migration to virtual ecosystems have added several unique research opportunities and theoretical gaps, especially in business-to-business (B2B) small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) markets in the service sector. Particularly, customer interactions in B2B services that were once sustained by the “people mix” now demand a huge overhaul in light of the “new normal” restrictions. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore how B2B service firms can engender firm value through virtual customer interactions during and in the post-COVID-19 era from an SME’s perspective.

This study adopts an exploratory qualitative inquiry to contribute to this discourse by proposing a conceptual framework based on prior literature and relevant theoretical frameworks, as well as qualitative interviews with SME managers, CEOs and/or owner-managers.

The qualitative findings reveal organizational preparedness, empathy, digital content and trust as key enablers of effective B2B virtual interaction that enhances cocreated value, thereby augmenting firm value. This study offers a much-needed examination of virtual interaction in B2B contexts and proposes a business customer virtual interaction model.

The exploratory nature of this study is one limitation, and future studies with a bigger representative sample size that uses survey or experimental data drawn from large enterprises might add value to the current findings. Also, while this study is conducted in dynamic markets due to the COVID-19 crisis, future research must examine the customer/firm’s experiences in other forms of crises-led market ecosystems.

B2B service firms must be strongly inclined to continuously take steps to develop and maintain virtual interaction with customers. Proactive efforts to familiarize internal and external stakeholders with virtual interaction platforms are a crucial step for effective customer engagement. The effectiveness of B2B virtual interactions can be strengthened through digital content that elicits trust and exhibits empathy, especially in crises led-markets. Also, the value created for the firm must be redeployed strategically to sustain positive customer engagement behaviors that continue to deliver value to the firm and the customer.

This paper contributes to the increasing B2B customer engagement literature by exploring the ongoing dialogue on how B2B firms can strive and succeed in the post-COVID-19 era or related crises-led market ecosystems through enhanced virtual B2B customer interaction efforts.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of different virtual product experiences (VPEs, interpersonal and machine) on sense of virtual community (SOVC) for consumers. Furthermore, parasocial interaction (PSI) and the sequence of VPEs likely moderate the relationship between different combinations of VPEs and SOVC.

The study employed a factorial online experimental design: 8 (combinations of VPEs, between subjects) x 2 (sequences of VPEs, between subjects). Participants were randomly assigned to the 16 groups.

The results show that with a high degree of PSI, the “escapism + social” VPEs group has the greatest beneficial effects on SOVC, whereas with a low degree of PSI, the “aesthetics + information” VPEs group has the greatest beneficial effects on SOVC. Besides, in VPES sequence 1 (interpersonal → machine), the “escapism + social” VPEs group has a greater effect on SOVC, whereas in sequence 2 (machine → interpersonal), there was no statistically significant difference for VPEs combinations relative to SOVC.

This study determines that consumers with different degrees of PSI differ from one another regarding their interactions with web sites and communities. Therefore, the characteristics of PSI provide manufacturers with various marketing strategies for interaction. The combinations and sequences of interpersonal and machine VPEs in this study can provide manufacturers with suggestions for appropriate online shopping web site design.

Although the importance of these virtual experiences is continuously increasing, there is still a lack of studies that empirically analyze from the combinations of machine interaction and interpersonal interaction of VPEs of the effects on consumer behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the association between physical and virtual trade fairs under the conceptual lens of engagement platforms. The authors build on the idea of business trade fairs (i.e. physical and/or virtual customer touch points) as learning and engagement platforms in service ecosystems.

The empirical study combines qualitative interviews (n = 16) with trade fair organizers, exhibitors and visitors and a survey (n = 263) comprising open-ended questions administrated to visitors of an international trade fair.

Findings highlighted the general role that trade fairs have in facilitating companies’ interactions with existing and potential customers. The trade fair develops in physical and virtual platforms, where companies advance business relationships and generate learning experiences and customer engagement. Participants look for solutions to problems and frequently innovation is a consequence of the engagement and learning processes. Yet, while the physical trade fair is instrumental for human personal interaction, namely, to establish informal networks of contacts and face-to-face interactions, virtual trade fairs are highlighted as a catalyst to foster interactivity and connectivity before and after the physical trade fair.

The study endures limitations that may be addressed by future research. For example, studies in similar contexts and in other settings (e.g. different industries) are warranted.

The study offers wide-ranging implications for the principal agents from the trade fair industry: trade fair organizers, exhibitors and visitors.

This research constitutes a preliminary attempt to understand the association between physical and virtual trade fairs and contributes to the discourses on customer engagement and the underlying notion of service ecosystems in the trade fair environment. In particular, the study looks at the role and connections that each platform plays for organizers and participants providing important insights into improving physical and virtual trade fair participation strategies.

Global virtual teams (GVTs) – composed of members in two or more countries who work together primarily using information and communication technologies – are increasingly prevalent in organizations today. There has been a burgeoning of research on this relatively new organizational unit, spanning various academic disciplines. In this chapter, we review and discuss the major developments in this area of research. Based on our review, we identify areas in need of future research, suggest research directions that have the potential to enhance theory development, and provide practical guidelines on managing and working in GVTs.

Virtual forms of organizing are increasing in today's organizations, with virtual teams being one of the most popular ways to bring distributed individuals together to work on tasks and make decisions. However, theory suggests that the factors that drive unethical behaviors in teams – such as deindividuated communication and impeded identification – are the same factors that characterize interaction in virtual teams. This suggests that virtual interaction may make teams particularly vulnerable to unethical behaviors such as opportunism and deception. This chapter maps out a theoretical model to better understand when unethical behaviors are likely to occur in virtual teams, and what virtual team characteristics might help to mitigate the likelihood of such behaviors.

Tourism via virtual reality (VR) technology has become an interesting option for consumers to “travel.” The best approaches to optimizing the VR tourism environment, improving the interactive experience of tourists and encouraging tourists to adopt VR are not yet fully understood. This study explores the willingness of tourists to adopt VR tourism from the dual aspects, richness and dynamics, of virtual social cues.

To examine the effects of richness (multiple vs. few cues) and dynamic (changeable vs. static cues) on consumers' willingness to adopt VR tourism, three virtual tourism scenes were designed and presented by head-mounted displays. The data were collected for participants in the VR laboratory and tested by ANOVA and partial least squares–structural equation modeling.

Virtual social cues can generate mental imagery through interactivity, vividness and parasocial interactions, thus increasing the consumer's likelihood of adopting VR tourism. It was also found that imagination moderates mental imagery and adoption intention. When the consumer's imagination is stronger, their mental imagery stimulates a stronger willingness to adopt VR tourism.

The authors innovatively utilize concepts of parasocial interaction and mental imagery and discuss the various influences and mediation mechanisms of social cue characteristics on consumers' adoption of VR tourism. The conclusions may provide new insights for VR tourism managers and tourism scholars.

Virtual assistants are increasingly used for persuasive purposes, employing the different modalities of voice and text (or a combination of the two). In this study, the authors compare the persuasiveness of voice-and text-based virtual assistants. The authors argue for perceived human-likeness and cognitive load as underlying mechanisms that can explain why voice- and text-based assistants differ in their persuasive potential by suppressing the activation of consumers' persuasion knowledge.

A pre-registered online-experiment (n = 450) implemented a text-based and two voice-based (with and without interaction history displayed in text) virtual assistants.

Findings show that, contrary to expectations, a text-based assistant is perceived as more human-like compared to a voice-based assistant (regardless of whether the interaction history is displayed), which in turn positively influences brand attitudes and purchase intention. The authors also find that voice as a communication modality can increase persuasion knowledge by being cognitively more demanding in comparison to text.

Simply using voice as a presumably human cue might not suffice to give virtual assistants a human-like appeal. For the development of virtual assistants, it might be beneficial to actively engage consumers to increase awareness of persuasion.

The current study adds to the emergent research stream considering virtual assistants in explicitly exploring modality differences between voice and text (and a combination of the two) and provides insights into the effects of persuasion coming from virtual assistants.

The paper uses the dramaturgical perspective for conceptualising trust development within temporary virtual teams. The underlying assumption is that temporary teams do not have the luxury of time that, according to the traditional trust theories, enables familiarity among team members and promotes trust development. Yet, in these teams, trust needs to develop quickly and it is important that it lasts throughout the short duration of the project lifecycle. Using the metaphor of a theatre, a dramaturgical perspective on trust relationships is adopted and is used to present actors, co‐actors and audience as all playing a key role in scripting, staging and performing virtual plays. The dramaturgical perspective provides an illustrative approach for uncovering the interactions between key players. As it is argued, these interactions elicit the process of trust development within the temporary setting of virtual teams, constituting a type of trust relationship that is mutually negotiated and jointly constructed. This type of trust is called “situated” and emerges from the scripted, pre‐scripted, co‐scripted, re‐scripted and unscripted computer‐mediated interactions of virtual players. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.

In this chapter, we focus on virtual teams and emotions during postmerger and acquisition (M&A) integration. Our main research question is “How to manage emotions and virtual teams following cross-border M&A?”. We answer this question through the following research subquestions: (1) What virtual interaction can be identified post-M&A?; (2) What emotions arises from virtual communication; and (3) What emotions and challenges do virtual teams encounter following cross-border M&As? This research is based on a single case study. The main findings imply that emotions, trust, and cultural differences play an important role in virtual interaction following a cross-border M&A.

This paper aims to propose and implement an integrated augmented-reality (AR)-aided assembly environment to incorporate the interaction between real and virtual components, so that users can obtain a more immersive experience of the assembly simulation in real time and achieve better assembly design.

A component contact handling strategy is proposed to model all the possible movements of virtual components when they interact with real components. A novel assembly information management approach is proposed to access and modify the information instances dynamically corresponding to user manipulation. To support the interaction between real and virtual components, a hybrid marker-less tracking method is implemented.

A prototype system has been developed, and a case study of an automobile alternator assembly is presented. A set of tests is implemented to validate the feasibility, efficiency, accuracy and intuitiveness of the system.

The prototype system allows the users to manipulate and assemble the designed virtual components to the real components, so that the users can check for possible design errors and modify the original design in the context of their final use and in the real-world scale.

This paper proposes an integrated AR simulation and planning platform based on hybrid-tracking and ontology-based assembly information management. Component contact handling strategy based on collision detection and assembly feature surfaces mating reasoning is proposed to solve component degree of freedom.