Smart services: The move to customer orientation

Abstract

Dear readers, Today, the attribute Bsmart^is widely used. Among the examples are smart infrastructures, smart systems, smart cities, smart products or even the smart world (Liu et al. 2019). In a preface to a special issue published in Electronic Markets on smart tourism, the guest editors mentioned that BBSmart^has become a new buzzword to describe technological, economic and social developments fueled by technologies that rely on sensors, big data, open data, new ways of connectivity and exchange of information (e.g., Internet of Things, RFID, and NFC) as well as abilities to infer and reason.^(Gretzel et al. 2015, p. 179). Since then the Bbuzz^has spread further and as with many buzzwords, their understanding is heterogeneous and differs depending on the background of the authors. For example, many researchers in the domain of smart cities adopt a technological perspective and analyze sensors, interfaces or platform architectures that enable use cases in an urban environment (e.g. Puiu et al. 2016). A view on smart products and the associated topics of cyber-physical systems reveals a more or less similar picture. On the other side, researchers from the information systems discipline bring attention to the increasing capabilities of computers, and how they are increasingly doing things that humans could once do exclusively. In their definition, smart machines are becoming like humans by recognizing voices, processing natural language, learning, and interacting with the physical world through their vision, smell, touch, and other senses, mobility and motor control with advanced artificial intelligence, intelligence augmentation and data (Demirkan et al. 2016; Matzner et al. 2018). They profoundly impat the current organization of business processes as illustrated in muliple examples by Porter and Heppelmann (2015). The present special issue on smart services follows this direction and that of the earlier on smart tourism by considering the interplay of technological, economic and social dimensions.

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