This SpringerBrief offers a state of the art analysis of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) communications and its role in marketing. The book begins with an overview of traditional word-of-mouth (WOM) and its evolution to eWOM. It discusses the differences between traditional and online WOM. The book examines why people engage in eWOM communications, but also how consumers evaluate its persuasiveness. It also looks at the effects of eWOM. The book identifies current gaps in the eWOM research, but also highlights future directions for this growing field. eWOM is an important marketing technique in brand communications, and it plays an important role in modern e-commerce. Marketers become extremely interested in enhancing the power of eWOM developing loyalty programs and building brands. Studying the effect of eWOM can be beneficial for companies. This book should be a good resource for scholars and practitioners that need to understand the pervasive effects of eWOM.

Industry 4.0 technologies identified as the main contributor to the digitalization era. New technology delivers optimal outputs by utilization of effective resource. Therefore, smart technologies that has inventive and creative objects became critical to enterprise; recent studies shows that its led enterprises business such as SMEs to considerable investments, which many organizations over the world attempt to use innovative technologies such as IoT and AI, these technologies have potential on sustainable business models. In addition to that, innovation usage in business models led to significant benefits towards sustainability concept in SMEs marketplace. Furthermore, Sustainability objectives refers to corporate sustainability term, which integrate enterprise operations with social, educational, environmental and economic benefits, as process of decision-making can impact during sustainability implications. This book focus on the implementation of smart technologies for growing business, the book includes research articles and expository papers on the applications of technology on Decision Making, Healthcare, Smart Universities, Advertising, E-marketing, Public Sector and Digital Government, FinTech, RegTech. Some researchers also discussed the role of smart technologies in the current COVID-19 pandemic, whether in the health sector, education, and others. On all of these, the researchers discussed the impact of smart technologies on decision-making in those vital sectors of the economy.

Big data and machine learning are driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution. With the age of big data upon us, we risk drowning in a flood of digital data. Big data has now become a critical part of both the business world and daily life, as the synthesis and synergy of machine learning and big data has enormous potential. Big data and machine learning are projected to not only maximize citizen wealth, but also promote societal health. As big data continues to evolve and the demand for professionals in the field increases, access to the most current information about the concepts, issues, trends, and technologies in this interdisciplinary area is needed. The Encyclopedia of Data Science and Machine Learning examines current, state-of-the-art research in the areas of data science, machine learning, data mining, and more. It provides an international forum for experts within these fields to advance the knowledge and practice in all facets of big data and machine learning, emphasizing emerging theories, principals, models, processes, and applications to inspire and circulate innovative findings into research, business, and communities. Covering topics such as benefit management, recommendation system analysis, and global software development, this expansive reference provides a dynamic resource for data scientists, data analysts, computer scientists, technical managers, corporate executives, students and educators of higher education, government officials, researchers, and academicians.

This book reports state-of-the-art results in Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing. This edited book presents original papers on both theory and practice. It addresses foundations, state-of-the-art problems and solutions, and crucial challenges.

With the increasing prevalence of information, communication, and technology, including social media, in the digital economy, leveraging consumer behavior and psychology has become a dominant ground for researchers and practitioners to inspect the trends, opportunities, and challenges to social networking service (SNS) developers and online firms. These platforms have become a key channel for social interactions and networking among individuals and online communities to leverage business activities in respect to product and service visibility and sustainability via the internet. Leveraging Consumer Behavior and Psychology in the Digital Economy is a pivotal reference source that provides current research on topics relevant to consumer behavior, consumer psychology, consumer value, customer satisfaction, and loyalty and how best to utilize this research consumer behavior and psychology in the digital economy. Emphasizing critical topics in the field of consumer behavior research, this publication is a wide-ranging resource for professionals, practitioners, marketers, retailers, business managers, academics, researchers, and graduate-level students interested in the latest material on consumer behavior and psychology in the digital economy.

This book includes selected papers presented at the International Conference on Marketing and Technologies (ICMarkTech 2021), held at University of La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain, during December 2–4, 2021. It covers up-to-date cutting-edge research on artificial intelligence applied in marketing, virtual and augmented reality in marketing, business intelligence databases and marketing, data mining and big data, marketing data science, web marketing, e-commerce and v-commerce, social media and networking, geomarketing and IoT, marketing automation and inbound marketing, machine learning applied to marketing, customer data management and CRM, and neuromarketing technologies.

This book goes into a detailed investigation of adapting artificial neural network (ANN) and structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques in marketing and consumer research. The aim of using a dual-stage SEM and ANN approach is to obtain linear and non-compensated relationships because the ANN method captures non-compensated relationships based on the black box technology of artificial intelligence. Hence, the ANN approach validates the results of the SEM method. In addition, such the novel emerging approach increases the validity of the prediction by determining the importance of the variables. Consequently, the number of studies using SEM-ANN has increased, but the different types of study cases that show customization of different processes in ANNs method combination with SEM are still unknown, and this aspect will be affecting to the generation results. Thus, there is a need for further investigation in marketing and consumer research. This book bridges the significant gap in this research area. The adoption of SEM and ANN techniques in social commerce and consumer research is massive all over the world. Such an expansion has generated more need to learn how to capture linear and non-compensatory relationships in such area. This book would be a valuable reading companion mainly for business and management students in higher academic organizations, professionals, policy-makers, and planners in the field of marketing. This book would also be appreciated by researchers who are keenly interested in social commerce and consumer research.

Interactive marketing, as one of the fastest growing academic fields in contemporary business world, is the multi-directional value creation and mutual-influence marketing process through active customer connection, engagement, participation and interaction. Contemporary interactive marketing has moved beyond the scope of direct marketing or digital marketing, as the market is becoming a forum for conversations and interactions among connected actors or participants in platform ecosystems. The advancement of mobile technology with interactive content and personalized experience makes interactive marketing the new normal in the business world. This handbook contains the most comprehensive and cutting-edge knowledge in the interactive marketing field. The 41 chapters that are divided into eight sections cover all aspects of contemporary interactive marketing realm, including social media and influencer marketing, big data and machine learning in predictive analytics, mobile marketing and proximity marketing, interactive digital marketing and Omnichannel marketing, AI, VR and AR in business applications. With a focal point on interactive marketing, this handbook takes a multidiscipline perspective, from new technology innovations, social media and platform application, economic and cultural impacts, social and psychological analysis, and management and information system. This book provides a timely and comprehensive textbook companion and/or course project resource for college educators and students used for variety of graduate and undergraduate marketing courses, such as Digital Marketing, Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing, New Media Communication, Marketing Analytics and Marketing Management, etc. It offers valuable references for academic researchers who are interesting conducting and publishing in interactive marketing research. The state-of-art review and emerging new trends presented in the book are particularly useful for research idea generation and conceptual development. The book also putts forward insightful guidelines and practical tools for business management in the application of new interactive marketing strategies and applications in the real world practices. Chapter 41 “Ethical Considerations in Gamified Interactive Marketing Praxis” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This two-volume set constitutes the proceedings of the 19th IFIP WG 6.11 Conference on e-Business, e-Services, and e-Society, I3E 2020, held in Skukuza, South Africa, in April 2020.* The total of 80 full and 7 short papers presented in these volumes were carefully reviewed and selected from 191 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Part I: block chain; fourth industrial revolution; eBusiness; business processes; big data and machine learning; and ICT and education Part II: eGovernment; eHealth; security; social media; knowledge and knowledge management; ICT and gender equality and development; information systems for governance; and user experience and usability *Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic and the consequential worldwide imposed travel restrictions and lockdown, the I3E 2020 conference event scheduled to take place in Skukuza, South Africa, was unfortunately cancelled.