۱٫۱٫ Research Context, Aims and Value

Smart, technology-based interactions and synergies between businesses and consumers have already precipitated as a corner stone of the 21st century economic context. Though relatively young in age, digital technologies’ sheer gravity has forced an astonishingly extensive volume of research to be dedicated to it, in a – de facto – futile attempt to keep up with its aggressive nature. For many years, marketers and advertisers have created communication strategies based on print, radio, TV, and mainstream internet media to broadcast their marketing messages. With rapid developments in technology, the effectiveness of these traditional media has signifi- cantly decreased and newer digital channels such as e-mail, social media and mobile have emerged. Digital marketing communication techniques, especially mobile marketing – on which this paper focuses – revolutionized marketing towards primary communication goals (such as attention and trust from customers), as well as towards wider strategic marketing challenges (such as developing lasting inimitable competitive advantages). The popularity of personal mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets has, in fact, introduced a new form of marketing to businesses that can target a large number of people, anywhere in the world, while also furnishing businesses with relevant information about the needs, preferences and profiles of their customers; all in a timely and profitable manner. However, some research studies (see subsequent literature review) suggest that mobile marketing does not succeed as an isolated channel: it works best when integrated with other channels, such as social media, to form a cross-platform strategy or, in other words, to adopt a multi-channel marketing approach. And while existing literature on the subject has largely adopted a more functionalistic interpretation of the subject, focusing on the explicit and more visible/tangible implications and benefits of smart technologies in the business-consumer (B2C) relationship, other scholars (e.g. Shankar et al., 2016; and Shankar, 2016) have also adopted a more holistic approach (see subsequent literature review). This research, in the context of the latter, transcends the functional and oligo-dimensional approach of many conventional works, to provide a multi-perspective analysis of the values involved in the retailing B2C relationship; not as a simple interaction, but as a comprehensive system. Specifically, based on the conceptual development of theoretical considerations in existing literature, the research aims to develop a value-based multi-dimensional framework for B2C smart retailing. Towards this aim, four distinct objectives have been set: 1. to undertake an extensive theoretical research on existing literature on the subject and its peripheral and contextual factors; 2. to identify the value categories and individual elements, which explicitly or implicitly define the retailing B2C relationships and synergies; 3. to descriptively delineate their inter- and intra-relationships; 4. To prescriptively incorporate all into a single, provisional, value-based multi-dimensional framework for B2C smart retailing.