This issue of Electronic Markets includes a special issue on the Internet of Things (IoT) and a cluster of general research articles on social commerce. While being related to different technological enablers, IoT and social media are closely connected to a confluence of various previously separate technologies. In the case of IoT, physical devices with sensors or actuators are connected via wireless networks, standards (e.g. by ISO JTC 1) and digital platforms. Social media in turn are based on an amalgamation of Internet network technologies (e.g. HTTP, HTML), Web 2.0 applications (e.g. blogs, RSS) and cloud platforms. Both technologies have also shown to complement each other in numerous application scenarios. Among the examples are the inclusion of users to save energy in smart buildings and environments (Crowley et al. 2014) or location-based social media campaigns in combination with various kinds of wearables (Maiorescu et al. 2020). Such convergence has been a property of technological evolution for decades and led to continuous improvements in quantitative (e.g. speed, energy efficiency) and/or qualitative (e.g. functionality, usability) terms. This power of convergence has triggered upheaval in many industries and also gave birth to new businesses. The following first glances at several past developments before it discusses the foreseeable “next convergence”.

Convergence as multifaceted term

Starting research on convergence quickly reveals that the term is used in many application contexts. In her “introduction to a confusing term”, Balbi (2017, p. 31) elaborates on the origins of convergence, which are rooted in the eighteenth century and evolved from the discipline of ray physics across other disciplines such as mathematics and biology as well as to the social sciences and humanities during the twentieth century. In the technological context, convergence already existed before the dawn of digital technologies, for example with synergies between telegraph and press companies (Balbi 2017, p. 34). However, it was only with the rise of digital technologies that convergence reached its profound impetus. The role of digital technology as “common currency for convergence” (Rolland 2003, p. 16) was most visible with technological digitalization (or digitization), which allowed for transferring analog into binary values and for easily storing as well as sharing these values in databases and networks. This technological dimension of digitalization (Alt 2018) is also reflected in the first dimension of convergence in Table 1. It includes the convergence of digital content as well as the convergence of networks with examples such as voice over IP (VoIP) or triple and quadruple play (e.g. Hens and Caballero 2008) as well the convergence of devices. The latter is visible in complex devices like smartphones, which replace several previously separate devices (e.g. navigation device, camera, torch, clock, wallet, media player). As with many multifunctional devices, this integration comes with a trade-off since the broader overall functional spectrum is often inferior to the more sophisticated specialized separate devices.

Table 1 Convergence in various dimensions
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The convergence of devices and their functionality is closely related to the dimension of products and processe (see Table 1). Obviously, the devices are hardware products in themselves and their functionality is often determined by software products (e.g. operating system, digital services). Following Greenstein and Khanna (1997, p. 203f) “two products converge in complements when the products work better together than separately or when they work better together now than they worked together formerly”. Despite being more complex in itself, the ability to access many services via a single device reduces the complexity for the user and thereby creates value. The same occurs with interaction channels and processes, where convergence leads to a coordination among channels and the combination of process models of various organizations into a crossover model. From an organizational perspective, convergence was also related to the business-IT alignment discussion, which is necessary as digitalization becomes more application-oriented and affected products as well as processes (Alt 2018). Although this even comprises the information part of physical products and processes, this effect is most visible in completely information-based industries (e.g. media, finance). For example, digitalization allowed the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs to offer its investment functionalities via their mobile app Marcus and to enhance this functional scope with personal finance management features. This was undertaken in their attempt to enter the retail banking business (Jones 2021).

From a competitive perspective, the introduction, substitution and enhancement of offerings in the market has important implications. In fact, “unification of functions and the coming together of previously distinct products […] often challenges the status quo while allowing new entrants from adjacent industries […] to extend their scope and reach” (Srinivasan and Venkatraman 2020, p. 268). Convergence of technologies and products often led to disruptions of the respective industries. A well-known example is the conflict between Apple Music and Apple Records, which operated in separate industries until digitalization made them competitors and adversaries in many fierce legal proceedings (Kopp 2017). As illustrated in the early example of the multimedia industry (Wirtz 1999), convergence created new configurations and new roles in value creation. Again, the power of convergence (Hoque et al. 2011) had important implications and meanwhile seized other industries as well. In particular, the big tech companies and platform businesses have made inroads in many industries.

The role of platforms

Broadly speaking, digital platforms provide functionality to coordinate activities among multiple actors. Linking these actors from in and outside of an existing industry, collecting data from them and homogenizing this data to alleviate communication, brokerage and integration activities (Malone et al. 1987, p. 488) are key for digital platforms and might be enhanced with further value adding services. The latter might benefit from the application of novel or other existing technologies, such as social media, artificial intelligence, just to name a few. They contribute to a “common distribution infrastructure“, which has been emphasized as being important for the production and distribution of products and services in the media industry (Rolland 2003, p. 17). The same applies to the role of the information superhighway (Wirtz 1999, p. 14), which was proposed almost thirty years ago (Benjamin and Wigand 1995). More recently, the “platformization” occurred in many industries and various types of platforms surfaced. For example, Li et al. (2015) present a data platform that collects, encapsulates and transfers data from IoT environments and offers business process integration and execution functionalities. In general, two lines of argumentation may be distinguished:

  • Digital platforms as enablers of convergence. This thread is based on the reasoning that platforms have the potential to bring together developments from various domains. It might comprise several types of platforms as described in the notion of architectural convergence (Srinivasan and Venkatraman 2020). Advances in hardware platforms (e.g. powerful mobile devices with numerous functionalities) and software ecosystems (e.g. operating systems with cloud resources and app stores) combined with standards that foster interoperability (e.g. APIs for digital service usage across devices and providers) are driving innovation and convergence. Similarly, industries are converging on e-commerce platforms like Amazon, which offers services in various retail segments as well as in financial and computing services. In this sense, the coordinating and integrating role of platforms may be seen as a catalyst for convergence.

  • Convergence as a driver of change for digital platforms. Remarkably, only little research may be observed on the relationship between convergence and integration. While integration may be associated with a coherently and on-purpose designed pattern with aligned elements, most research on convergence pursues a process-based understanding that not only comprises an independently evolved similarity, but also a process that produced this similarity. This interpretation from the natural sciences (see Stayton 2015) recognizes various states of similarity (or integration) that may also be measured (e.g. using the Wheatsheaf index in biology). Assuming that convergence is an ongoing temporal process of adaptation with intermediate states, competition in markets will affect networks and ecosystems alike and will lead to new business models for digital platforms (Basole 2009; Mody et al. 2020).

These thoughts highlight the proposition in an Electronic Markets editorial from 2015. It suggested the convergence of the three previously separate evolution paths “enterprise systems”, “inter-organizational systems (IOS), electronic data interchange (EDI) and digital platforms” as well as the “internet” towards an inter-organizational information infrastructure. By analogy with the availability of intra-organizational information infrastructures where enterprise systems allowed for new cross-functional process designs within organizations, it was argued that the emerging inter-organizational “infrastructures may enable new networked processes, which vice versa generate demand for new technological solutions” and it was stated that “ecosystems are a prominent example of the power of convergence” (Alt and Zimmermann 2015, p. 170f). Since “convergence is not an end state” (Vukanovic 2018, p. 4), it may be assessed that the formation of such an inter-organizational infrastructure is still ongoing and has become visible in many industries. An example is the banking industry where open banking and banking-as-a-platform initiatives offerings have spread in recent years (Lynn et al. 2020). Figure 1 shows this convergence in the lower part and illustrates with examples (that should not be interpreted as strictly consecutive) that additional technologies with separate evolution paths are now coming into play.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Converging evolution paths with examples

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The next convergence

For sure, it is a challenging and complex undertaking to paint a picture that visualizes all relevant technological developments. Figure 1 does therefore not claim completeness, but highlights three areas where convergence has become visible and which influence what might be termed as “next convergence”. Although this notion may be found in macroeconomics (Spence 2011), the following focuses on the context of digital transformation. First, for media and network convergence, so-called “triple and quadruple play” offerings appeared and promise potential in the technological dimension of the information infrastructure (e.g. Abecassis et al., 2017). Second, SMAC has been coined to denote a convergence that occurred after the inception of the multi-media World Wide Web era from 1995 until 2010 (Gopichand 2015). By combining social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies, the SMAC concept combines many functionalities that shaped digitalization endeavors in many firms and societies worldwide. Third, one of the latest developments of convergence may be observed under the acronym DARQ, which comprises distributed ledger technology (DLT), artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR), and quantum computing (QC) (Accenture 2019). It emphasizes technological developments that coevolved more or less separately from each other, but have been discussed in research and practice for decades. For example, DLT technologies combine the fields of distributed database systems and cryptology, AI the fields or rule-based (expert) systems and neurocomputing, XR the fields of IoT and virtual reality, and QC the fields quantum mechanics, mathematics and computer science. Although forecasting the implications of the next stage in convergence is difficult, four general developments may be expected:

  • Decentralization. DLT infrastructures complement secure distributed data storage with application functionalities (e.g. smart contracts, distributed applications) that allow functionalities of centralized platforms to be decentralized (Alt 2020). Although this must not be the preferred solution for the respective application domains, the technology creates new possibilities in handling the challenging coordination tasks between participating actors in business networks. New product and process design as well as business models may arise here, especially driven by the large capitalization of many cryptocurrencies.

  • Integration. Convergence will lead to more integrated devices and solutions. They will comprise larger bundles of functionality and involve more networking among previously separate devices and services. On the one hand, this will bring about more powerful services and the potential of supporting users more comprehensively. On the other hand, the development will come with the challenges of integration, where errors are quickly propagated, transparencies are not in everybody’s interest and network effects accumulate market power and evoke monopolization.

  • Automation. The combination of DLT with big data (BD) and AI creates a potential to digitally support transaction as well as decision support processes. Algorithms are expected to take over standardized routine processes and solve many syntactic as well as semantic problems that still impede inter-organizational and platform efficiency today. Beyond transactions, recent advances in QC have raised hopes to address complex problem solving for specific and less structured tasks in security, optimization, and also innovation. Although still being in a nascent stage, QC is recognized as disruptive for the future of platforms (Cusumano et al. 2020).

  • Humanization. Fourth, the confluence of DLT, IoT, BD, AI and XR spurs hopes for a strengthening of human-aspects in digital platforms. This pertains to the empowerment of individuals in managing their daily lives and in influencing “what comes together” and what does not, in particular referring to personal data. Ultimately, convergence should serve to better support humans in their many roles, be it as a consumer, patient, citizen or employee. Like with other major technological development, the implications may also turn out as confining, coercive, fraudulent, manipulative or repressing, which calls for vigilant and careful political regulation.

Articles of present issue

For sure, “the next convergence” is only at the beginning of unfolding its transformative power. At the same time, it will not be the last convergence and Dennis’ statement from 2003 is still to the point: “Those who believe convergence is dead and that any effective coming together of divergent media industries, firms or content is unlikely will, I think, be mistaken” (Dennis 2003, p. 10). The present special focuses on IoT as an element that drives the next convergence. In particular, IoT may be seen as included in the SMAC cluster since sensors are mobile devices themselves and are part of more complex mobile devices like smartphones. Social media use data from these mobile devices, which in turn are stored, analyzed and further processed on cloud resources. In addition, linkages to the DARQ cluster exist, for example, with blockchain and AI in the context of digital platforms (e.g. Atlam and Wills 2019; Singh et al. 2020; Wu et al. 2021). These developments are also visible in some contributions of the special issue, which is titled “Internet of things for electronic markets”, the guest editors Gunasekaran Manogaran, Naveen Chilamkurti and Ching-Hsien Hsu organized a set of four papers that are introduced separately in their preface (Manogaran et al. 2021). Closely related to the IoT special issue are two papers in the general research section:

  • The first shows how digital transformation not only changes a single, but multiple ecosystems. Using the examples of automotive, blockchain, financial, insurance and IIoT ecosystems, the authors Tobias Riasanow, Lea Jäntgen, Sebastian Hermes, Markus Böhm and Helmut Krcmar systematically identify the similarities and differences between a total of fifteen roles in these ecosystems. By distinguishing core, intertwined and ecosystem-specific role clusters, they contribute to the conceptual knowledge in the domain of digital platforms and ecosystems (Riasanow et al. 2021).

  • The second paper focuses on smart mobility services, a field that has emerged with the convergence of networked vehicles, mobile apps and digital platforms. In their research, Thomas Schulz, Markus Böhm, Heiko Gewald and Helmut Krcmar shed light on the desires, priorities and needs of the potential customers of these services (Schulz et al. 2021). A differentiated analysis presents valuable insights on the role of factors such as price, age or functionality, which are important to understand and to design such smart services.

The remaining six general research articles represent a cluster in the domain of social media. As mentioned above, social media services and platforms are one development within the SMAC convergence. It has enhanced business processes in many organizations, in particular in customer-related processes and service industries. The contributions of the individual papers are:

  • An analysis of the influence of user experiences. In a comparison of the relationships between two fashion retailers and their followers on Instagram, the authors María del Rocío Bonilla Quijada, José Luis Del Olmo Arriaga and David Andreu Domingo confirm the relevance of using social media to engage customers (del Rocío Bonilla Quijada et al. 2021). At the same time, they conclude that interactions remain at a rather low level and much potential exists for leveraging these relationships.

  • Insights on how to display products across various social media platforms. The paper from Erik Ernesto Vazquez proposes that consumers could use social media to collect information about products instead of search engines and online reviews (Vazquez 2021). Based on a literature review, he suggests a conceptual framework for the knowledge acquisition process and proposes recommendations on how e-tailers should display their products on social media platforms and how relationships to (new) customers may be initiated on these platforms.

  • The benefits of the information richness for consumers’ buying intentions. Thomas Friedrich, Sebastian Schlauderer and Sven Overhage develop the concept of social commerce feature richness and were successful to show how this positively impacts buying intentions (Friedrich et al. 2021). From their comprehensive online experiment, they derived metrics and suggestions, which are helpful for designing social commerce implementations.

  • Findings on how comments differ on various social media platforms. Another paper on social commerce analyzes travel booking websites and reveals that comments (“word of mouth”) on the platforms are contingent on the community and the respective platform. The authors M. Awais Shakir Goraya, Zhu Jing, Mahmud Akhter Shareef, Muhammad Imran, Aneela Malik and M. Shakaib Akram present an analysis of the various effects and emphasize the role of trust as a mediating factor (Goraya et al. 2021).

  • The role of peer groups in supporting members of a community. The authors Annette Felgenhauer, Katharina Kaufmann, Julia Klier and Mathias Klier chose the case of career counseling and show that members of a community are “in the same boat”. By analyzing postings in online peer groups for career counseling in Germany, they identify several types of social support. After relating these to the peers’ characteristics, the paper concludes that social media provide specific potentials that traditional one-to-one counseling are unable to offer (Felgenhauer et al. 2021).

  • The peculiarities of social enterprises regarding globalization and localization. Contrary to their expectations, Mamoun Benmamoun, Hadi Alhor, Christine Ascencio and Woojong Sim found that social enterprises would favor the globalization strategy. This is in contrast to how existing e-commerce businesses standardize, which suggested to organize operations across national markets (Benmamoun et al. 2021).

Community and reviewers in 2020

In summary, this issue was another joint effort where work from many participants “converged”. We are grateful to the guest editors for organizing the review process and for successfully selecting four interesting papers. This also includes our appreciation to the reviewers who shared their advice as well as the authors who revised their manuscripts in multiple iterations. The same applies to the general research papers, who were overseen by associate editors. This is worth mentioning since Electronic Markets has seen another steep rise in submissions in 2020, which considerably increases the workload for editors, reviewers and the editorial office. You may obtain a feeling from the list below that shows all active reviewers in 2020 with most of them contributing repeatedly. Thank you to all of them!

In hindsight, 2020 was also a special year for Electronic Markets since the first two virtual editorial board meetings brought more participants to the (virtual) table than ever before. During the last meeting the board approved new colleagues who accepted to serve as associate editors and members of the editorial board. Our thanks go to Shahrokh Nikou from Åbo Akademi University in Finland, Anastasia Constantelou from the University of the Aegean in Greece and Hans-Ulrich Buhl from the University of Augsburg in Germany as new associate editors and to Nizar Abdelkafi from Politecnico di Milano in Italy and Heinz-Theo Wagner from Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences in Germany as new editorial board members. Lina Zhou from the University of North Carolina left the board after having supported Electronic Markets for many years.

Finally, the last editorial mentioned that issue 30/4 was dedicated to Rolf T. Wigand who was a long-term associate and senior editor for Electronic Markets. In the present issue, Ian MacInnes who is also an Electronic Markets board member and a former colleague of Rolf at Syracuse University, appreciates his outstanding legacy in an obituary (MacInnes 2021). Ian shares a personal view on Rolf’s fascination with digital transformation, in particular of electronic markets on changing industry structures. Last but not least, it was Rolf’s work on the information superhighway, which foresaw some 25 years ago that convergence would lead to disintermediation and platform businesses. This is more or less on spot of what we experience today.

Amir Zaib Abbasi

Ulla Hakala

Loo Geok Pee

Babak Abedin

Kazem Haki

Krassie D Petrova

Amjad Abu ELSamen

Shengnan Han

Matti Pihlajamaa

Lailatul Faizah Abu Hassan

Robert R Harmon

Jens Poeppelbuss

Abubakar Mohammed Abubakar

Marikka Heikkilä

Oliver Posegga

Martin Adam

Andreas Hein

Günter Prockl

Rupesh K. Agrawal

Andreas Henrich

Andreja Pucihar

Petri Ahokangas

Oliver Hinz

Dorina Rajanen

Shahriar Akter

Hartmut Hoehle

Isabel Ramos

Mazen Ali

Wout Hofman

Bharat Rao

Saqib Ali

Christopher Patrick Holland

Ulrich Reimer

Rainer Alt

Val Anne Hooper

Olaf Reinhold

Jörn Altmann

Jianwei Hou

Uwe Riss

Norm Archer

Tianhang Huang

Maximilian Röglinger

Pierre-Emmanuel Arduin

Inkyoung Hur

Kristina Rosenthal

Alexia Athanasopoulou

Ulla Hytti

Angela Roth

Mahdi Atia

Maria-Eugenia Iacob

Boriana Rukanova

Norman Au

Efosa Carroll Idemudia

Mijalche Santa

Volker Bach

Claire Ingram Bogusz

Gerhard Satzger

José Ángel Bañares

Stanislav Ivanov

Detlef Schoder

Snehasish Banerjee

Dietmar Jannach

Maximilian Schreieck

Christine Bauer

Marijn Janssen

Gerhard Schwabe

Ingrid Bauer

Reinhard Jung

Jürgen Seitz

Larissa Becker

Özgür Kafali

Zhen Shao

Steven Bellman

Lele Kang

Seunghun Shin

Katerina Berezina

Myung Ja Kim

Muhammad Nadeem Shuakat

Benedikt Berger

Ranjan B Kini

Åsa Smedberg

Markus Bick

Mathias Klier

Matthias Söllner

Baidyanath Biswas

Sören Köcher

Pedro Soto-Acosta

Francisco Javier Blanco-Encomienda

Chulmo Koo

Konstantina Spanaki

Markus Böhm

Antonia Köster

Martin Spann

Roger Bons

Helmut Krcmar

Newton Spolaôr

Harry Bouwman

Kevin Kuan

Katarina Stanoevska-Slobeva

Jan vom Brocke

Pradip Kumar Sharma

Dennis Marten Steininger

Ricardo Buettner

Tyge-F. Kummer

Lucas Stich

Dimitrios Buhalis

Karl R. Lang

Emanuel Stoeckli

Hans Ulrich Buhl

Ulrike E. Lechner

Stefan Strecker

Jacques Bulchand

Ho Geun Lee

Frantisek Sudzina

Peter Buxmann

Minwoo Lee

Ali Sunyaev

Christer Carlsson

Christine Legner

Reima Suomi

Sohail Chaudhry

Christiane Lehrer

Eric-Oluf Svee

Langtao Chen

Jan Marco Leimeister

Samar I. Swaid

Christy Cheung

Uwe Leimstoll

Luis Téran

CB Choi

Hongxiu Li

Rahul Thakurta

Sujeong Choi

Tao Li

Frédéric Georges Thiesse

Youngjoon Choi

Yi Li

Paul H. Timmers

Raffaele Ciriello

Qinyu Liao

Artemi Tonikidou

Michel Clement

Dália Liberato

Luba Torlina

Anastasia Constantelou

Weng Marc Lim

Manuel Trenz

Omar Andrés Carmona Cortés

Juho Lindman

Aarni Tuomi

John D'Ambra

Yong Liu

Frank Ulbrich

Mark De Reuver

Zhiyong Liu

Nils Urbach

Henk J. de Vries

Fabio Lobato

Rogier van de Wetering

Giacomo Del Chiappa

June Lu

Elmira Van den Broek

Yi Ding

Long Ma

Jørgen Veisdal

Xuebing Dong

Xiao Ma

Buvaneshwaran Venugopal

Sara D'Onofrio

Wolfgang Maass

Heinz-Theo Wagner

Paul Drews

Maria Madlberger

Samuel Fosso Wamba

Paulo Duarte

Christian Maier

Lisa Wan

Nestor Duch-Brown

Carla Bonato Marcolin

Yun Wan

Katharina Ebner

Marjeta Marolt

Ping Wang

Roman Egger

Malte Martensen

Sascha Weigel

Jan Fabian Ehmke

Christian Matt

Christof Weinhardt

Christian Engel

Pascal Mehrwald

Lauri Wessel

Ramazan Esmeli

Luiz Mendes-Filho

Manuel Wiesche

Torsten Eymann

Matthias Meyer

Maria A. Wimmer

Michael Fellmann

Karl Jacob Mickelsson

Axel Winkelmann

Jerry Fjermestad

Qingfei Min

Jochen Wirtz

Lawrence Fong

Milad Mirbabaie

James Richard Wolf

Maximilian Förster

Matthias Murawski

Ziang Xiao

Zhimin Gao

Jamie Murphy

Sung-Byung Yang

Judith Gebauer

Julia Neidhardt

Benjamin Yen

Nitza Geri

Barbara Neuhofer

Ahad Zareravasan

Richard Glavee-Geo

Shahrokh Nikou

Ji Zhang

Ulrich Gnewuch

Chinedu Ossai

Yin Zhang

Jaap Gordijn

Boris Otto

Naim Zierau

Ulrike Gretzel

Kwangsoo Park

Hans-Dieter Zimmermann

Nick Hajli

Sangwon Park

Steffen Zimmermann