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The purpose of this paper is to identify the relationships between process modeling and Industry 4.0, the strategic themes and the most used process modeling language in smart factories. The study also presents the growth of the field of study worldwide, the perspectives, main challenges, trends and suggestions for future works.

To do this, a science mapping was performed using the software SciMAT, supported by VOS viewer.

The results show that the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), Unified Modelling Language (UML) and Petri Net are the most relevant languages to smart manufacturing. The authors also highlighted the need to develop new languages or extensions capable of representing the dynamism, interoperability and multiple technologies of smart factories.

It was possible to identify the most used process modeling languages in smart environments and understand how these languages assist control and manage smart processes. Besides, the authors highlighted challenges, new perspectives and the need for future works in the field.

This study aims to show how the increasingly popular life course paradigm (LCP) can be employed as an alternative to the successful aging perspective (SAP) as an overarching conceptual research framework to study elderly consumers' financial well-being.

A questionnaire was administered to a convenience sample of 804 Thai consumers over the age of 45 selected via the snowball method.

Significant results were found for hypotheses derived from the LCP for older consumers' financial well-being, suggesting critical roles of early life experiences, developmental factors, adaptation mechanisms and contextual factors.

This paper shows how efforts to study consumers over the course of their lives can be improved by utilizing the principles and theoretical perspectives of the LCP and offers research directions for studying not only older consumer well-being but also numerous consumer behavior issues at any stage of life in an innovative way.

In a competitive environment, eHealth small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs’) barriers to survival differ from those of large enterprises. Empirical research on barriers to eHealth SMEs in less prosperous areas has been largely neglected. This study fills this gap by employing an integrated approach to analyze barriers to the development of eHealth SMEs. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

The authors collected data through semi-structured interviews and conducted thematic analysis to identify 16 barriers, which were used as inputs into total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) to build interrelationships among them and identify key barriers. Cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) was then applied validate the TISM model and classify the 16 barriers into four categories.

This study makes significant contributions to theory by identifying new barriers and their interrelationships, distinguishing key barriers and classifying the barriers into four categories. The authors identify that transcultural problems are the key barrier and deserve particular attention. eHealth SMEs originating from regions with cultural value orientations, such as hierarchy and embeddedness, that differ from the UK’s affective autonomy orientation should strengthen their transcultural awareness when seeking to expand into UK markets.

By employing an integrated approach to analyze barriers that impede the development of eHealth SMEs in a less prosperous area of the UK, this study raises entrepreneurs’ awareness of running businesses in places with different cultural value orientations.

This commentary puts forth a conceptual framework, referred to as the consumer, organization, government framework of unintended digital technology service failures, that specifies consumer, organizational and governmental shortcomings that result in digital technologies failing in terms of negatively affecting consumer, communal, national and/or global welfare.

The authors conceptualize an original framework by engaging in a literature review regarding marketplace failures associated with digital service technologies.

The framework shows that three drivers explain why commercial digital technologies often fail. The first driver highlights misuse or criminal intent from individuals. The second involves organizations failing to prevent or to address technology failures. The third pertains to failures that stem from governmental institutions.

The authors encourage researchers to build on their framework by putting forth research questions. To prevent or lessen opportunities for digital technologies to result in service failures, the authors also offer practitioners a “digital technology service failure audit.” This audit shows how digital technology creators and managers can anticipate and address consumer, organizational and governmental factors that often cause digital service technologies failures.

Despite the absence of industry-specific regulations and the existence of some regulatory immunities, digital technology providers have an ethical duty, and may be obligated under applicable tort law principles, to take steps to prevent unintended harm to consumers before launching their service technologies.

This work reveals that digital technologies represent new and different threats to vulnerable consumers, who often rely on, but do not fully understand, these technologies in their everyday living. The framework helps consumers, organizations and government agencies to identify and remedy current and potential instances of harmful digital technologies.

The objective of this paper is to propose an approach to comparatively analyze the performance of drugs and consumable products warehouses belonging to different healthcare institutions.

A Cluster Analysis is completed in order to classify warehouses and identify common patterns based on similar organizational characteristics. The variables taken into account are associated with inventory levels, the number of SKUs, and incoming and outgoing flows.

The outcomes of the empirical analysis are confirmed by additional indicators reflecting the demand level and the associated logistics flows faced by the warehouses at issue. Also, the warehouses belonging to the same cluster show similar behaviors for all the indicators considered, meaning that the performed Cluster Analysis can be considered as coherent.

The study proposes an approach aimed at grouping healthcare warehouses based on relevant logistics aspects. Thus, it can foster the application of statistical analysis in the healthcare Supply Chain Management. The present work is associated with only one regional healthcare system.

The approach might support healthcare agencies in comparing the performance of their warehouses more accurately. Consequently, it could facilitate comprehensive investigations of the managerial similarities and differences that could be a first step toward warehouse aggregation in homogeneous logistics units.

This analysis puts forward an approach based on a consolidated statistical tool, to assess the logistics performances in a set of warehouses and, in turn to deepen the related understanding as well as the factors determining them.

Studies report that frontline employees frequently discriminate against overweight customers, a group of vulnerable consumers that is growing worldwide. However, because most discrimination by frontline employees is covert, the authors ask whether overweight customers perceive discrimination and what influences this perception. Drawing on field theory, this paper aims to investigate how two environment factors (frontline employee overweight and frontline employees’ neutral treatment of other customers) and two person factors (customer pre-encounter affect and self-esteem) influence customer-perceived weight discrimination.

In a pilot study and three experimental studies, the authors examine the impact of covert discrimination of overweight customers by frontline employees on customers’ perception of discrimination and the influencing effects of environment and person factors. Hypotheses are tested using regression analysis.

The authors find that overweight customers perceive covert weight discrimination by frontline employees. Frontline employee overweight mitigates the effect of covert discrimination, and (state and trait) self-esteem amplifies this effect. Frontline employees’ neutral treatment of other customers is insignificant. Customer (state and trait) negative affect directly increases customer-perceived discrimination independent of covert discrimination.

While extant research focuses on marketplace discrimination triggers and consequences, the perspective of the discriminated customer and what influences his or her perception of covert discrimination has attracted much less attention. Moreover, research rarely addresses overweight as a discrimination trigger. As environment and person influences frequently shape service encounters, the authors contribute novel and relevant insights to the literature. This is of high value, especially in light of the harmful consequences marketplace discrimination entails for customers and service firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a retailer-managed ranking system on product reviewers’ well-being and its relationship to customer engagement.

Content analysis of reviewers’ posts, generated over a six-month period following a critical incident involving a change in the reviewer ranking system, informs findings.

Fulfilling needs for social relatedness, competency and autonomy may be critical aspects that underlie reviewer engagement. Findings explain how organic and hierarchical reviewing platform design elements may support or thwart psychological need fulfillment. Reviewers expressed positive well-being when system elements facilitated organic interactions between consumers and reviewers, fulfilling social relatedness and competency needs. Hierarchical design elements elicited mixed well-being sentiments. When reviewers used rank as a feedback mechanism to signal competency development, positive well-being emerged, whereas ranking features perceived as lacking in integrity or reducing one’s autonomy, evoked negative sentiments. A stimulus-organism-response framework, grounded in environmental psychology, provides the basis for the online reviewer engagement model. This study deepens understanding of online customer engagement by illustrating how a ranking system and social elements influence well-being and motive fulfilment, key psychological processes associated with engagement.

Highly engaged reviewers on one community platform inform findings, so results are not representative of all reviewers, but are relevant for conceptual purposes concerning critical incidents.

Findings have implications for the design of recognition platforms created to support customer engagement in online reviewing communities.

Public ranking systems designed to recognize and reward reviewers can enhance as well as degrade consumer well-being within an online service environment.

First empirical work to examine the value of consumer well-being as it relates to engagement within an online reviewing service context.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a process model for the role transformation of vulnerable consumers through support services.

The study is based on four years of participant observation at a community-based support service and in-depth interviews with the consumers. Visual ethnography was used to document the process of the consumers' role transformation through service exchanges.

The main outcome of this study is a consumer transformation model, describing consumers' role transformation processes, from recipients to generic actors. The model demonstrates that vulnerable consumers will transform from recipients to quasi-actors before becoming generic actors.

Vulnerable consumers' participation in value cocreation can be promoted by providing social support according to their dynamic roles. By enabling consumers to participate in value cocreation, social support provision can become sustainable and inclusive, especially in rural areas affected by aging and depopulation. Transforming recipients into generic actors should be a critical aim of service provision in the global challenge of aging societies.

Beyond identifying service factors, the research findings describe the mechanism of consumers' role transformation process as a service mechanics study. Furthermore, this study contributes to transformative service research by applying social exchange theory and broadening service-dominant logic by describing the process of consumer growth for individual and community well-being.

This research aims to develop a conceptual framework that explores the influence of open-source software (OSS) on the sustainability of library services within the context of academic libraries in Bangladesh.

The study uses a comprehensive research methodology that includes literature review and analysis to construct a robust conceptual framework. This study investigates the various dimensions of OSS adoption and its impact on library service sustainability.

The research findings reveal the critical factors and mechanisms through which OSS can positively affect the sustainability of library services. This study identifies key drivers and challenges associated with the adoption of open-source solutions in the context of Bangladesh academic libraries.

The framework developed in this research offers practical insights for academic libraries in Bangladesh seeking to adopt OSS solutions. This study guides how to leverage these technologies to enhance the sustainability of library services in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

This study contributes to the academic literature by presenting a novel conceptual framework tailored to the unique context of Bangladesh academic libraries. This study adds value by addressing the specific challenges and opportunities related to OSS adoption and its implications for library service sustainability in this region.

This study aims to develop a better understanding of how online health community (OHC) members with different health literacy (HL) levels benefit from their participation, through the analysis and comparison of their resource integration (RI) processes. It investigates through a RI lens how the vulnerability of community members – captured as their level of HL – affects the benefits they derive from participation.

Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to investigate the effects of healthcare service users’ vulnerability. Data were collected about their profiles and levels of HL. Furthermore, 15 in-depth interviews were conducted.

The study demonstrates how low levels of HL act as a barrier to the integration of available online health resources. Participation in OHCs appears less beneficial for vulnerable users. Three types of benefits were identified at the individual level, namely, psychological quality-of-life, physical quality-of-life and learning. Benefits identified at the community level were: content generation and participation in the development of the community.

This study has implications for the understanding of how service users’ activities affect their own outcomes and how the vulnerability of users could be anticipated and considered in the design of the community.