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Online Retailing and Sustainable Marketing

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2022) | Viewed by 11196

Special Issue Editors

1. College of Business, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
2. Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University, Cranfield, UK
Interests: relationship marketing; retaling; sustinability; social networks including Chinese guanxi and Arab wasta; tourism marketing
Department of Marketing and Retail Management, Surrey University Business School, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK
Interests: consumption decisions; customer experience; consumption practises and sustainability; ethics of consumption; virtual marketplaces; influence of social media to sonsumption
School of Management, Cranfield University, Cranfield, UK
Interests: corporate brand; identity and reputation and CSR in different sectors including the retailing sector; integrated marketing communications (IMC); guanxi and wasta

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Over the last couple of decades, online shopping has become extremely popular, with worldwide online retail sales reaching 3.53 trillion USD in 2019 and estimated to grow to 6.54 trillion USD by 2023 (Clement, 2020). This growth is the result of consumers’ improved ability to shop online as well as the benefits related to online shopping, such as convenience (Sorce, Perotti, and Widrick, 2005), better price (Teo, 2002), flexibility (Wu, 2003), variety, and access to information (Zhou, Dai, and Zhang, 2007).

This ongoing shift towards digital/online retailing—whether through firms’ own websites or via aggregated e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Taobao, Alibaba, and Souq—has dramatically changed the retailing landscape in many ways. For example, online retailers are increasingly relying on electronic WOM and reviews (Liu, Jayawardhena, Osburg, and Babu, 2019) to position their products and are able to provide personalized offerings through vast data harvesting exercises (Campbell et al., 2020). These trends in combination have afforded online retail firms to make better marketing decisions which are both financially beneficial and more sustainable (How et al., 2020).

The concept of sustainable market management merges corporate social responsibility, macro-marketing strategies, and sustainable development management theories (Mitchell et al., 2010; Elliott, 1990). The digitalisation of business processes and consumers’ social lives is a boon to sustainable market management. Not only is tangible retail moving online—the digitisation of the service sector is even further down the road with increasing use of online solution tools such as chatbots and e-agents (Hildebrand and Bergner, 2019; Bergner et al., 2019). While the COVID-19 pandemic has caused huge suffering and economic losses around the world, paradoxically, it has also boosted two important global concepts: online retailing and sustainability. Some scholars have already noted the positive impact of the current outbreak on sustainability (Barbier and Burgess, 2020). Consequently, there has been increasing interest in sustainability in general from individuals, corporations, governments, and academics. The measures taken to counter the spread of the coronavirus, such as business closures and social distancing, have offered corporations an opportunity to digitalise their customer service and move further towards online retailing (Roggeveen and Sethuraman, 2020).

Against this backdrop, this Special Issue, titled “Online Retailing and Sustainable Marketing”, focuses on exploring a broader application of sustainable market management in online retailing. This call for papers is deliberately wide-ranging. The following list of possible research avenues and topics is not exhaustive, but proposes some fruitful areas for exploration:

  1. What role does online retailing data play in enhancing a firm’s sustainability practices?
  2. How does cloud computing influence online retailing and what role does it play in sustainability practices?
  3. What role does a firm’s virtual frontline, i.e., chatbots and e-agents, play in sustainability orientation?
  4. What are the ethical concerns behind online retailing algorithms and machine learning?
  5. What are consumers’ behaviours, attitudes, and preferences towards sustainable/green online retailers?
  6. What role do different sociodemographic factors play in affecting consumers and their decisions (experimental studies)?
  7. Does firm size matter: is sustainable market management limited to large corporations?
  8. How can the application of artificial intelligence aid and motivate firms in making sustainable management decisions?
  9. How can online luxury retailers offer a sustainable luxury experience?
  10. How can luxury retailers merge sustainability with luxury in their online offerings?
  11. Do virtual reality and augmented reality in online retailing contribute to sustainable market management? If so, how?
  12. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on online retailing and sustainability.
  13. The impact of online retailing on de-shopping and return policies.
  14. The impact of online reviews and e-WOM on consumer decisions to buy online.

References

Barbier, E. B. & Burgess, J. C. 2020. Sustainability and development after COVID-19. World Development, 135, 105082.

Campbell, C., Sands, S., Ferraro, C., Tsao, H.-Y. J. & Mavrommatis, A. 2020. From data to action: How marketers can leverage AI. Business Horizons, 63, 227-243.

Clement, J (2020) Retail e-commerce sales worldwide from 2014 to 2023, Statista. Available at: https://0-www-statista-com.brum.beds.ac.uk/statistics/379046/worldwide-retail-e-commerce-sales/ (Accessed: 15/1/21).

Elliott, G. R. 1990. The Marketing Concept–Necessary, but Sufficient? An Environmental View. European Journal of Marketing, 24, 23-30.

Hilden, T., Hildebrand, C., & Häubl, G. (2018). Machine Talk: How Conversational Chatbots Promote Brand Intimacy and Influence Consumer Choice, in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 46, eds. Andrew Gershoff, Robert Kozinets, and Tiffany White, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 33-38.

Hildebrand, C. & Bergner, A. 2019. AI-driven sales automation: Using chatbots to boost sales. NIM Marketing Intelligence Review, 11, 36-41.

How, M.-L., Cheah, S.-M., Chan, Y.-J., Khor, A. C. & Say, E. M. P. 2020. Artificial intelligence-enhanced decision support for informing global sustainable development: A human-centric AI-thinking approach. Information, 11, 39.

Liu, H., Jayawardhena, C., Osburg, V. S., & Babu, M. M. (2019). Do online reviews still matter post-purchase?. Internet Research, 30 (1), 109-139.

Mitchell, R. W., Wooliscroft, B. & Higham, J. 2010. Sustainable market orientation: A new approach to managing marketing strategy. Journal of Macromarketing, 30, 160-170.

Roggeveen, A. L. & Sethuraman, R. 2020. How the COVID pandemic may change the world of retailing. Journal of Retailing, 96(2),169–171

Sorce, P., Perotti, V. and Widrick, S. (2005) Attitude and age differences in online buying, International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 33(2), 122-32.

Teo, T.S.H. (2002) Attitudes toward online shopping and the internet, Behavior & Information Technology, 21(4), 259-71.

Wu, S.I. (2003) The relationship between consumer characteristics and attitude toward online shopping, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 21(1), 37-44.

Zhou, L., Dai, L. and Zhang, D. (2007) Online shopping acceptance model-A critical survey of consumer factors in online shopping, Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, 8(1), 41-62.

Dr. Ahmed Shaalan
Prof. Dr. Chanaka Jayawardhena
Dr. Marwa Tourky
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • retailing
  • online retailing
  • sustainable
  • market management
  • COVID-19 pandemic

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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11 pages, 1128 KiB  
Article
Sustainable FinTech Innovation Orientation: A Moderated Model
by Manaf Al-Okaily, Abdul Rahman Al Natour, Farah Shishan, Ahmed Al-Dmour, Rasha Alghazzawi and Malek Alsharairi
Sustainability 2021, 13(24), 13591; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su132413591 - 09 Dec 2021
Cited by 48 | Viewed by 4162
Abstract
Financial technology (otherwise known as FinTech) refers to a type of technology and innovation that tries to improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services. Despite the importance of this technology in people’s financial transactions in improving the management of their [...] Read more.
Financial technology (otherwise known as FinTech) refers to a type of technology and innovation that tries to improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services. Despite the importance of this technology in people’s financial transactions in improving the management of their financial operations, processes, and lives, there is a lack of empirical evidence about sustainable FinTech services in the Jordanian context. Consequently, this research examines the factors that influence the acceptance of FinTech services, which have a variety of social, environmental, and ecological benefits. This study proposes an integrated model by combining the extended technology acceptance model (TAM) with the perceived enjoyment as an independent variable and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) as a moderator variable simultaneously. A total of 304 responses from Jordanian citizens were analyzed by the quantitative method of partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The result confirmed that perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment have a significant and positive influence on users’ decision to use FinTech services. Meanwhile, eWOM is found to moderate the relationship between perceived usefulness and Jordanians’ decisions to use FinTech services. Finally, this study provides practical implications for managers to encourage them to provide adequate, reliable, and sustainable services to their customers at a reasonable cost that fit their demands and ultimately improve their living standards. Current study limitations and future research directions are presented in the last section. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Online Retailing and Sustainable Marketing)
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14 pages, 890 KiB  
Article
Influence of Cities-Based Entertainment on Tourist Satisfaction: Mediating Roles of Destination Image and Experience Quality
by Meqbel M. Aliedan, Abu Elnasr E. Sobaih and Ibrahim A. Elshaer
Sustainability 2021, 13(19), 11086; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su131911086 - 07 Oct 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3139
Abstract
In response to the Saudi Vision 2030, the Kingdom has developed mega entertainment events in different cities, referred to as cities-based entertainment, to diversify the long prevalent oil-dependent economy and change the traditional image of the Kingdom as a sole religious tourism destination. [...] Read more.
In response to the Saudi Vision 2030, the Kingdom has developed mega entertainment events in different cities, referred to as cities-based entertainment, to diversify the long prevalent oil-dependent economy and change the traditional image of the Kingdom as a sole religious tourism destination. This research develops and tests a conceptual model on the relationship between the quality cities-based entertainment recently provided at the kingdom, and destination image, quality of tourist experience, and tourist satisfaction. More specifically, the research examines the direct influence of quality cities-based entertainment on tourist satisfaction and the indirect influence through destination image and quality of tourist experience. A structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test structural relationships between the research variables. The results showed a positive and significant influence of event (cities-based entertainment) quality on destination image and on tourist experience quality. However, the results revealed that event—i.e., cities-based entertainment—quality failed to have a direct influence on tourist satisfaction. Hence, destination image and tourist experience quality were found to fully mediate the influence of event quality on tourist satisfaction. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed and elaborated. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Online Retailing and Sustainable Marketing)
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Review

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17 pages, 1299 KiB  
Review
The Role of Virtual Environment in Online Retailing: State of the Art and Research Challenges
by Sara Poggesi, Michela Mari, Arash Kamangar and Pinalba Schilleci
Sustainability 2022, 14(7), 4131; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14074131 - 30 Mar 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2254
Abstract
The aim of the paper is to systematically analyse the effects of the online environment on customers’ behaviour in order to offer a first, comprehensive state-of-the-art of the research on this topic. By analyzing a final sample of 105 papers, 4 themes have [...] Read more.
The aim of the paper is to systematically analyse the effects of the online environment on customers’ behaviour in order to offer a first, comprehensive state-of-the-art of the research on this topic. By analyzing a final sample of 105 papers, 4 themes have been identified, according to the theoretical lenses adopted by scholars. Results show that the traditional stimuli–organism–responses approach (also known as S–O–R) is the most frequently applicable conceptual framework for the analysis of the effects of the online setting, and worth mentioning are the modifications to the original S–O–R model proposed by scholars, which allow considering the specificities of the online environment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Online Retailing and Sustainable Marketing)
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