Dear Colleagues,

Our efforts to integrate sustainability into contemporary retail strategies, tactics and operations have highlighted the importance of determining whether it would be necessary or not to bring back a humanistic approach to omnichannel shopping. In the era of artificial intelligence (AI), the ways in which e-retail employees’ jobs are transformed by machines that have become able to learn remains a largely unanswered question. Some have suggested that the sustainability of online retail and e-commerce relies on the need for the development of a “human touch” in e-customer relationships.

We are thus interested in the social dimension of e-retail and e-commerce sustainability whereby if not replacing jobs, AI potentially displaces employees’ job responsibilities toward tasks that favor, for example, the ability to be responsive and empathetic.

As such, further research is required to determine the conditions and modalities through which the reactivation of a “human touch” and re-humanized employees can trigger irreplaceable values that contribute to sustainability and e-retail development. This holds especially in the present day where post-pandemic consumption will need to be requalified and redefined.

In this Special Issue, we invite researchers to examine instances in which the human touch of employees plays a positive role, and occurrences in which it seems to be more problematic. This calls for the reinterrogation of the roles of technologies as a sustainable solution provider in e-commerce and online retail.

In doing so, we aim to acquire original research proposing theoretical developments both through qualitative and quantitative methodologies with insightful managerial implications in both developed and developing economies.

Articles can be proposed under one of the following topics:

1. Employees’ role when surrounded by digital technology in e-commerce;
2. Relationships between technology, technological development, and sustainability in e-commerce;
3. Online retail employees’ journeys in the circular and social economy, and how these journeys are supported (or not) by technology;
4. Online retail technology for inclusive, equitable, and supportive employee professional developments in retail;
5. Online retailers’ HR strategies;
6. Health threats (stress, burn out) for employees using digital technology in e-commerce.

This Special Issue shall open the debate on the extent to which the human touch is needed in contemporary e-commerce and online retail. We would like to invite you to participate in this debate.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research.

Dr. Ronan De Kervenoael
Dr. Alexandre Schwob
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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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.

• Retail management sustainability
• Online retail transformation and sustainability
• Omnichannel retail
• AI, IoT, AR/VR and employees’ roles
• E-commerce and online retail sustainability
• Humanism
• Social sustainability
• Qualitative, quantitative methods

• Sustainability in E-commerce and Retail Online in Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research (1 article)