Abstract
This special issue has explored ways in which consumers engage with brands and firms within ever-evolving technological environments (Ostrom et al., 2015). The articles show how firms adopt an increasingly broad array of emerging technologies to facilitate interactions with their prospects and customers (Letheren et al., 2019; Willems et al., 2019; Dessart et al., 2019 or Marbach et al., 2019 in this issue). New technology can be used at any stage of the marketing process, including during the segmentation, targeting or positioning sub-processes, to support or transform any of the marketing mix elements, thereby affecting consumer engagement with brands (Hollebeek et al., 2014). For example, product customization options (e.g. personalized Starbucks beverages) can alter the product offering, thereby enabling firms to more responsively cater to customers’ unique needs, wants or preferences (Keeling et al., 2019 in this issue). Technology can also be used for promotional purposes (e.g. social media-based micro-targeting or virtual reality [VR]-based gamification to engage consumers; see Carlson et al., 2019 in this Issue), to facilitate distribution (e.g. via additive manufacturing or 3 D printing) or to influence consumers’ willingness to adopt or pay for focal offerings (e.g. via mobile or contactless payments; Kuppelwieser et al., 2014), thereby exerting potential effects on any of the marketing mix elements. In addition, firms’ increasing replacement of human service staff with robotic customer interactions is expected to have important effects on customer perceptions, intentions and future behaviors (Huang and Rust, 2018). Therefore, technology is rapidly reshaping the ways in which customers engage with brands and firms (Hollebeek et al., 2019).