Dear Readers of Electronic Markets,

In the last issue we discussed that the Internet has been enhanced with mobile devices which are about to outnumber the human population. While the infrastructure has become almost ubiquitous, other developments have occurred which make use of this availability. Among the prominent are Internet services, such as the World Wide Web (WWW), which has spurred a large number of innovations on the Web itself, such as electronic trading and social media platforms. Many of these web-based services have also become known under the notion of Cloud Computing. We recognize that the ubiquitous infrastructure of the Internet has been the fertilizer of the WWW infrastructure which in turn has become the platform of more user- and/or business-centric services and platforms. Today, we are not only experiencing the modification of key Internet technologies, which date back to the 1970s, in terms of bandwidth, security, and reliability, but also the interaction of at least three infrastructure technologies with more to be expected.

At the same time we experience that the entire digital evolution is still at an early stage. Although an increasing number of private and professional users are connected via various devices to the electronic world and most are able to access the WWW, the use to services has several shortcomings. Participation in social media platforms is as proprietary as the usage of most cloud services, i.e. membership in Facebook and Twitter is as separated from each other as the use of most apps on end-user devices. In the professional or the business-to-business environment, companies are still reluctant to share their enterprise knowledge on so-called multi-tenant cloud services and are in an orientation phase to integrate social media potentials, such as sharing, co-creation, and close user interaction in their strategies. This opens a broad spectrum for research which – as with all fundamental innovations – needs to address opportunities as well threats.

We are happy to present you five research articles in this issue that contribute in their way to understanding aspects of future Internet usage. First, the special theme section on “Electronic Markets and the future Internet: From clouds to semantics” includes three pieces which focus on customer acquisition with social media and the adoption of cloud computing. Our guest editors Ricardo Colomo-Palacios, Pedro Soto-Acosta, T. Ramayah and Meir Russ will introduce them in detail in their preface and we are grateful for their effort in organizing this special theme. In the general research section one contribution presents a classification of shared services and another an assessment of the quality of mobile services.

The typology of shared services is authored by Suraya Miskon, Erwin Fielt, Wasana Bandara and Guy Gable and examines the different structural arrangements of shared services in the area of higher education. Using three dimensions of shared services, a total of eight structural types of shared services were identified which reach from an internal shared center to inter-organizational shared services. This contribution delivers a first approach to explain alternative organizational types for shared services. The second general research by Jun Zhuo, June Wei, Lai C. Liu, Kai S. Koong and Shengtao Miao investigates whether mobile services within the Chinese express industry were helpful in increasing service quality. Using a set of six determinants the authors measure the improvement in service quality and argue that businesses need to address all determinants alike to achieve a positive contribution to service quality.

Quality brings us to the final aspect of this editorial. Attached you will find a list of all reviewers that participated in reviewing a total of 148 submissions which underwent the process in 2012. We highly appreciate the commitment of all reviewers and would like to emphasize that their valuable time is critical for attaining and improving the quality of Electronic Markets.

Best regards from Leipzig and St.Gallen

Rainer Alt

Karen Heyden

Hubert Österle

Reviewers in 2012

Witold Abramowicz

Joong Ahn

Jasser Al-Kassab

Rainer Alt

Jörn Altmann

José María Álvarez

Jennifer Argo

Volker Bach

Lars Bækgaard

Christine Bauer

Ulrike Baumöl

Jörg Becker

Steven Bellman

Alexander Benlian

Markus Bick

Rainer Böhme

Flavio Bonfatti

Harry Bouwman

Claudia Brauer

Sonja Buchegger

Hans-Ulrich Buhl

Lemuria Denise Carter

Cristina Casado-Lumbreras

Ian Charity

Hailliang Chen

Christy Cheung

Alain Chong

Woon Kian Chong

Bryan Christiansen

Hsiang Chyi

Ricardo Colomo-Palacios

Ioanna Constantiou

Mary Cronin

Robert Davison

Henk de Vries

Ana Rosa del Aquila Obra

Haluk Demirkan

Claudia Diaz

Yi Ding

Catherine Dwyer

Isao Echizen

Marwane El Kharbili

Morten Falch

Hannes Federrath

Judith Gebauer

Denise Gengatharen

Susanne Glissmann

Peter Gomber

Israel González-Carrasco

Jaap Gordijn

Rüdiger Grimm

Sumeet Gupta

Sang Pil Han

Shengnan Han

Marit Hansen

Robert Harmon

Koichiro Hayashi

Jukka Heikkila

Alberto Heredia-García

Walter Herzog

Thomas Hess

Axel Hochstein

Natascha Hoebel

Wout Hofman

Reto Hofstetter

Christopher Holland

Val Hooper

Markus Huber

Pham Thi Bach Hue

Sid Huff

Yu Ichifuji

Reimer Ivang

Przemyslaw Kazienko

Dogan Kesdogan

Deepak Khazanchi

Hee-Woong Kim

Stefan Klein

Benn Konsynski

Chulmo Koo

Stefan Köpsell

Helmut Krcmar

Ioannis Krontiris

Cait Lamberton

John Laugesen

Ulrike Lechner

Gwanhoo Lee

Choong Lee

Kun Chang Lee

Ronald Lee

Young Jin Lee

Jan Marco Leimeister

Uwe Leimstoll

George Lekakos

Dahui Li

Simon Lillystone

Mingfeng Lin

Claudia Loebbecke

José Luis López-Cuadrado

Yingda Lu

André Ludwig

Maria Madlberger

Volker Mahnke

M. Lynne Markus

Ulf Melin

Matthias Meyer

Frederik Meyer

Florian Michahelles

Kazuhiro Minami

Ali Reza Montazemi

Jürgen Moormann

Felicitas Morhart

Takuya Mori

Martin Mulazzani

Jan Muntermann

Thomas Myrach

Thuyuyen Nguyen

Emil Numminen

Hitoshi Okada

Boris Otto

Lionel Page

Chris Parker

Mogens Kuehn Pedersen

Daniel Pérez-González

Krassie Petrova

Otto Petrovic

Key Pousttchi

Thomas Puschmann

Fethi Rabhi

T. Ramayah

Ramiro Manuel Ramos Moreira Gonçalves

Gilad Ravid

Michael Rebstock

Olaf Reinhold

James Richard

Alejandro Rodríguez-González

Nicholas Romano

Marcus Rothenberger

Glenda Rotvold

Colin Rowat

Meir Russ

Oliver Rutz

Terence Saldanha

Roberto Santana Tapia

Ryoichi Sasaki

Christian Schaefer

Christian Schmitz

Detlef Schoder

Michael Scholz

Sebastian Schrittwieser

Guido Schryen

Petra Schubert

Eusebio Scornavacca

Jürgen Seitz

Kim Serota

Sivaramakrishnan Siddarth

Marianna Sigala

Stephan Sigg

Martin Smits

Jai-Yeol Son

Peijian Song

Carsten Sørensen

Pedro Soto-Acosta

Martin Spann

Nikhil Srinivasan

Thorsten Staake

Vladimir Stantchev

Dennis Steininger

Andrew Stephen

Rosemary Stockdale

Jens Strüker

Frantisek Sudzina

Yuan Sun

Juliana Sutanto

Samar Swaid

Chuan-Hoo Tan

Ter Chian Tan

Yao-Hua Tan

Christian Thiel

Frédéric Thiesse

Stella Tian

Luba Torlina

Indrit Troshani

Virpi Tuunainen

Nils Urbach

Aareni Uruthirapathy

Bart van den Hooff

Jos van Iwaarden

Tibert Verhagen

Joseph Vithayathil

Adam Vrechopoulos

Yun Wan

Edward Wang

Bruce Weber

Christof Weinhardt

Stefan Weiss

Hannes Werthner

Andrew Whinston

James Wolf

Chang Xu

Benjamin Yen

Moshe Yonatany

Hideki Yoshii

Hiroshi Yoshiura

Chi Zhang

Xiaolin Zheng

Gerrit W. Ziggers

Alf Zugenmaier