Management science in the era of smart consumer products: challenges and research perspectives

Abstract

Smart products not only provide novel functionalities, but also may establish new business models, markets, or distribution channels, strengthen relationships with consumers, and/or add smart remote services. While many technical obstacles of such products have already been overcome, the broad market dissemination of smart products still poses some vital managerial challenges for decision makers. In this paper, we outline the technical potential and future trends of smart consumer products, discuss economic challenges in four scopes, namely, preference-based new product development, market analysis, supply chain design, and industry development, and, in particular, we highlight research perspectives for management science in this promising field.

Smart design engineering: a literature review of the impact of the 4th industrial revolution on product design and development

“…Finally, the 4th IR is characterised by communication among CPSs, which resulted in the IoT; indeed, this 'smartness' can be characterised by the communication and collaboration among autonomous CPSs (Park et al 2017;Porter and Heppelmann 2014). CPSs integrate intelligence-generating technologies, including (i) sensors and/or actuation to either gather data from the environment or to use the data to change the environment, respectively; (ii) computing power for data analysis and iii) optional interfaces to exchange information with the CPS environment (Dawid et al 2017). According to Rüßmann et al (2015), the nine core Industry 4.0 technologies are autonomous robots, simulation, horizontal and vertical system integration, the IoT, cybersecurity, the cloud, additive manufacturing, augmented reality, big data and related analytics.…”

“…Data showing how the products are used and their actual performance and condition provides insight regarding the infield adequacy according to real-use scenarios, which (1) might result in the identification of opportunities for updating or upgrading the product and (2) would provide an understanding of how customer needs are evolving (Dawid et al 2017;Rodríguez-Mazahua et al 2016). These data also allow companies to determine better and more-tailored maintenance strategies (Gao et al 2015;Windelband 2017).…”

“…Furthermore, due to the fact that smart products are intelligent and can adapt to the environment, it is important to manage the product mechanisms that act autonomously, since the creation of value does not end after the product is sold (Abramovici et al 2016). This data enables the exploration of how human behaviour can change the design of smart products and services, and more informed and self-aware consumption decisions can be made using feedback data resulting from the analysis of interactions between consumers and their self-generated data (Dawid et al 2017). Another example is the use of search engines, recommender systems and e-commerce to exploit the increasing amount of information available for free on the Internet.…”

Wearable and autonomous computing for future smart cities: Open challenges

“…This compromise depends on the energy and charging requirements of the device, and the structure of the device network. In order for smart cities to become viable investments for government bodies or companies, the cost of building, maintaining, and using long-range wireless infrastructure must be significantly reduced [1].…”

“…The vision of smart cities aims to integrate Internet of Things (IoT) technology to manage and improve urban development, the efficiency of services, and achieve a better quality of life [1]. This is illustrated in Fig.…”