Sustainability and Digital Retailing
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2021) | Viewed by 10580
Special Issue Editors
Interests: Branding, Consumer Experience, Digital Retailing, Retail Employees, Social Network Data, Sustainability
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Every day, we buy, consume, and experience services and products on popular websites such as Amazon, Tripadvisor, UberEats, and more. As today’s retail ecosystem undergoes a digital transformation, many retailers and consumers are lagging in adapting to the current era. This is partly due to uncontrollable variables such as standing institutional barriers, inequalities in accessing real-time data, and restricted product choices. Personal expectations and rules regarding values, norms, and habits in individual, social, and/or cultural environments further contribute to delays in progress (Kim et al., 2020). While sustainability is a complicated task for a single firm or consumers, the digital retail platform may enable such entities to initiate and shape a sustainability network by leveraging the medium’s connectivity and mobility. Retail consumers are rapidly becoming active agents of change within their social networks, and the retail field must capitalize on these relationships whilst sharing insights with the rest of the industry. Scholars and practitioners need to develop a sustainable digital transformation value equation or solution within the foreseeable future that focuses strongly on “mobility, connected networks, data informatics, and curated experiences”.
The issue of sustainability and digital retailing is a fascinating but complicated topic, because the digital platform is dynamically webbed between retail consumers, the global economy, society, and the retail enterprise environment. Sustainability for Digital Retailing can provide a new axis of reflection for individual consumers to enhance the reflexivity, meaning, purpose, and growth of sustainable projects harmonizing these different perspectives. It asks for a wide and complex vision—from a consumer perspective of effective and sustainable well-being, to a retail research perspective regarding natural, social, and organizational environments.
In this context, the purpose of this Special Issue is to collect and present innovative reflections and results of empirical research including case studies, comparative case studies (involving different countries, disciplines, or sustainability challenges), surveys, and novel informatics (pertaining to big data implementation). We also invite conceptual papers that offer state-of-the-art theories, reveal new dynamics of collaboration, or propose innovative ways to bring scientists, engineers, other professionals, and representatives of the public into productive collaboration. Papers selected for this Special Issue were subject to a rigorous peer review with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications.
In this Special Issue, we welcome papers that meet (but are not limited to) the following points:
- Develop sustainable capabilities able to respond to the fast-changing retail environment;
- Examine individual and cultural factors for promoting pro-environmental retailing models;
- Adopt digital technology to gain insight into sustainability models for retailing;
- Develop dynamic retailing capabilities for making and managing real-time data;
- Apply novel data informatics to the digital platform for sustainable retailing;
- Discuss current theories on digital retailing capabilities to welcome more dynamic, open, and outside–in approaches;
- Explore viewpoints and experiences of under-represented populations to better understand cultural influences on sustainable digital retailing; and
- Emphasize both internal processes and contextual factors that advocate for policy and practice interventions such as education, persuasion, media, and technology.
*Kim, H. M., Oh, K.W., & Jung, J. (2020). Socialization on Sustainable Networks: The Case of eBay Green’s Facebook. Sustainability, 12 (8), 3476, Doi:10.3390/su12083476
Prof. Dr. HaeJung Maria Kim
Prof. Dr. Jana Hawley
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
- Retail ecosystem
- Sustainable digital retailing
- Digital platform
- Data-driven informatics
- Curated consumer experience and engagement
