SMART RETAILING IN INTERNET COMMERCE: AN AI-ENABLED CUSTOMER-CENTRIC SERVICE FRAMEWORK
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69980/jns7m743Keywords:
Artificial Intelligence, Internet Commerce, Smart RetailingAbstract
This conceptual paper examines AI-enabled smart retailing as a customer-facing service transformation in Internet commerce rather than as a narrow technological or operational innovation. Drawing on a selective, theory-driven synthesis of services marketing, smart retailing, AI-enabled marketing, customer experience, service-dominant logic, human–AI interaction, and responsible-AI research, it develops a three-layer framework linking AI-enabled service capabilities, customer-experience mechanisms, and Internet-commerce outcomes. The framework identifies three capability groups—algorithmic personalisation and decision support, AI-mediated service interaction, and predictive service intelligence—and four evaluative mechanisms: decision value, interaction quality, transaction confidence, and algorithmic legitimacy. These mechanisms shape customer satisfaction, engagement, service-recovery effectiveness, platform trust, relationship quality, continuance intention, value co-creation, and inclusive service value. Human–AI governance, including privacy protection, transparency, fairness, customer control, human review, and digital accessibility, is treated as a boundary condition that determines whether AI-enabled services are perceived as trustworthy and customer-centred or as intrusive, opaque, unfair, and exclusionary. The paper contributes to Internet-commerce research by repositioning AI as a service-enabling capability and by explaining how customer evaluations translate AI applications into commercial and relational outcomes. It also proposes a focused research agenda for empirical testing across e-commerce websites, mobile applications, online marketplaces, social-commerce platforms, and omnichannel systems.
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