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
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Alt, R., Heyden, K. & Österle, H. Editorial 23/2. Electron Markets 23, 85–87 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-013-0135-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-013-0135-5