Dear Colleagues,

We are calling for papers for a Special Issue of the journal Sustainability on research into the trend of service industry changes in the 4th Industrial Revolution. The disruptive technology of the 4th Industrial Revolution is opening up a new era in distribution and logistics. The gaps among production, distribution, and logistics are disappearing, and convergence between markets and industries is growing. Additionally, unmanned distribution is actively being reviewed in fields such as logistics, delivery, stores, and warehouses, with drones drawing attention in unmanned delivery, and kiosks in unmanned stores. Amazon Go, Sam’s Club Now, Bingo Box, and Tao Cafe are the first global unmanned stores, but they are unlikely to be the only ones. Similarly, the spread of kiosks is a global trend seeing as, unlike humans who not only need to be trained and educated but might also have different levels of success and productivity in the job, kiosks can update a large amount of information in real time and always achieve the same performance. Technologies such as kiosks, simple payments, and artificial intelligence are the basis for “untact” (i.e., contactless) marketing, and users who are accustomed to that technology can escape the physical constraints or psychological discomforts of face-to-face consumption through non-face-to-face consumption. Mannequins using facial recognition technology can collect information such as age, gender, and race of the customers before them while at the same time examining a window shopper. Using artificial intelligence, big data, drones, Internet of Things, augmented reality, virtual reality shopping, kiosks, and chatbots, which symbolize the 4th Industrial Revolution, sales staff can provide products or services without directly facing consumers. Non-face-to-face transactions, unmanned stores, etc. are attracting attention with the development of new technologies. Thus, the proposed papers for this Special Issue may cover a broad range of distribution, logistics, and services strategies reflecting the technologies of 4th Industrial Revolution to enhance the national economy and people’s quality of life.

Prof. Dr. Jae-Ik Shin
Prof. Dr. Jae-Won Hong
Prof. Dr. Ji-Hee Jung
Guest Editors

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• 4th Industrial Revolution technologies
• Unmanned distribution and logistics
• O2O
• Untact marketing
• Unmanned store
• Service platform
• Data science
• Market sensing
• Digital marketing