AI-Enabled Marketing and Information Dynamics

Dear Colleagues,

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fundamentally transforming electronic commerce (e-commerce) by reshaping how firms and consumers interact across digital platforms, online marketplaces, and technology-mediated environments. In contemporary e-commerce ecosystems, technologies such as generative AI, AI-powered chatbots, virtual assistants, recommendation engines, and voice-based systems are no longer peripheral tools; rather, they serve as primary interfaces through which consumers search, evaluate, and purchase products and services.

In e-commerce, these AI-enabled systems play a critical role in information generation, filtering, personalization, and real-time decision support, thereby influencing key outcomes such as purchase decisions, transaction efficiency, customer experience, and platform engagement. AI-driven interfaces increasingly mediate the entire online customer journey—from product discovery and comparison to post-purchase service and relationship management. However, the growing reliance on AI in e-commerce environments also raises important challenges related to consumer trust, transparency, perceived risk, privacy concerns, and algorithmic governance, all of which are central to digital transactions and platform-based interactions.

This Special Issue will advance scholarly understanding of AI-enabled marketing and consumer behavior within electronic commerce environments. Specifically, it focuses on how AI technologies reshape information dynamics, consumer decision-making, and interaction processes in online marketplaces, digital platforms, and e-commerce systems. The Special Issue will explore how consumers perceive, evaluate, and interact with AI technologies, including chatbots, AI voice assistants, generative content systems, and recommendation agents, within digital commerce settings, and how these interactions influence key e-commerce outcomes such as the following:

• Online purchase intention and conversion;
• Customer engagement and platform stickiness;
• Trust in digital transactions;
• Customer satisfaction and post-purchase behavior;
• Adoption and continued use of AI-enabled e-commerce services.

By integrating perspectives from marketing, consumer behavior, and information systems, this Special Issue will generate theoretical and empirical contributions that advance research in electronic commerce, particularly in understanding AI-mediated interactions and their implications for digital markets and platform-based economies. We invite theoretically grounded and methodologically rigorous research that bridges marketing, information systems, consumer behavior, analytics, and strategy. Both conceptual and empirical contributions (quantitative, qualitative, experimental, or mixed-methods) are welcome, provided they align with the journal’s scope and offer novel theoretical and managerial insights.

Submissions may include, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Human–AI interaction dynamics in e-commerce service encounters and online customer journeys;
• The role of AI chatbot interactivity, personalization, and responsiveness in online shopping experiences;
• AI empathy, emotional simulation, and perceived social presence in digital customer service;
• Effects of AI communication style on online purchase decisions, satisfaction, and loyalty;
• Service recovery and complaint handling via AI agents in e-commerce platforms;
• Comparative evaluations of AI agents versus human service representatives in online retail contexts;
• Consumer adoption of AI agents (e.g., chatbots, voice assistants) in e-commerce platforms and determinants of continued use;
• Trust formation in AI-mediated interactions and trust in online transactions and platforms;
• Perceived intelligence, warmth, competence, and anthropomorphism of AI agents in digital commerce environments;
• Emotional engagement, attachment, and relational bonding with AI interfaces in platform-based ecosystems;
• Consumer acceptance and resistance to AI technologies in online marketplaces;
• Privacy concerns, perceived risk, and data disclosure intentions in e-commerce transactions;
• Transparency, explainability, and perceived fairness of AI-driven recommendations and decisions;
• AI-driven recommendation systems and their impact on purchase behavior.

Dr. Muhammad Ashfaq
Guest Editor

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 1400 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.

• artificial intelligence (AI)
• electronic commerce
• e-commerce platforms
• online marketplaces
• AI service agents
• human–AI Interaction
• conversational agents
• AI vs. human service agents
• AI-mediated marketing