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The recent pandemic period (COVID-19), while negatively impacting many companies, has contributed to the growth and adoption of online platforms such as marketplaces and e-commerce. This environment has led many companies, which previously acted only through offline channels, to adopt new technologies and online channels and develop new e-commerce strategies. Small and micro enterprises are most vulnerable due to their limited resources and lack of capabilities. For this reason, the main objective of this paper is to unveil the e-commerce implementation capabilities that micro and small enterprises should build and the challenges they must face when managing an e-commerce strategy.

The authors adopted an inductive qualitative research design approach focused on multiple case studies. The firms operate in the food and beverage industry.

The findings identify several e-commerce implementation capabilities that micro and small enterprises operating in the food and beverage industry should build to manage e-commerce strategies. These are related to outsourcing management, multichannel management, time management, internal stock management and marketplace choice. Moreover, the paper identifies key e-commerce implementation challenges these firms must cope with. These regard distribution management, potential loss of control, fresh product management and lack of resources, time and capabilities.

This research shows that proper capacity management in the implementation of micro and small enterprises e-commerce strategies is critical to achieving efficient results and preventing challenges that threaten such strategies. The research offers guidelines and frameworks for micro and small enterprises to understand how to manage e-commerce and face its challenges.

The Audit and Accounting Firms (AAF) companies are of great importance as they audit companies in different sectors and report on their economic-financial situation. The academic literature has analysed these firms but has not gone as far as to review their economic and financial health. Therefore, this study aims to focus on the analysis of whether these companies are viable companies beyond the large firms, whether they generate profits from their activity or whether they tend to go bankrupt. In addition, the impact of COVID-19 has been studied, since it is questionable whether the effect on AAF has been negative or positive.

In order to answer the hypotheses put forward in this study, analysis of the profitability, liquidity and solvency situation of AAF considering their size and age, as well as the impact of the pandemic on this sector has been done. In total, 12,469 European companies are analysed. After the descriptive analysis of the companies by ratios, the Altman Z-score model is used as a methodology to assess whether they are bankruptcy-prone companies based on their characteristics.

The results of the analysis of the study have shown that these are companies of great importance to the European economy and that, depending on their characteristics, there are companies that may be closer to the risk of bankruptcy. This study is an essential contribution to the academic literature, public administration and the management of auditing and accounting firms.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to analyse AAF at the European level with a panel data sample. The results obtained can be generalized and form the basis for future lines of research.

This study aims to examine consumers’ perception of artificial intelligence (AI) and AI marketing communication.

Twenty in-depth interviews were conducted to collect data and phenomenological reduction was used to analyze data.

Findings suggest that consumers’ interpretation of AI is multidimensional and relational with a focus on functionality and emotion, as well as comparison and contrast between AI and human beings; consumers’ perception of voice-assisted AI centers on the aspects of function, communication, adaptation, relationship and privacy; consumers consider AI marketing communication to be unavoidable and generally acceptable; and consumers believe that AI marketing communication to be limited in its effect on influencing their evaluation of products/brands or shaping their consumptive behaviors.

According to the authors' knowledge, this study is the first research project to gauge consumers' perception on AI and AI marketing communication.

This paper aims to explore customers' motives and behaviours in sharing comments and information on e-service platforms, as well as what leads them to avoid sharing after consumption.

To achieve the goal, this research used a mixed-method approach. Firstly, a two-phase qualitative design involving 2 focus groups and 27 in-depth interviews was employed. Secondly, a quantitative approach was implemented to test the relationship between three factors, identified in the qualitative analysis and comment-sharing behaviours.

The three identified factors are (1) willingness to improve the product/service and customer justice; (2) willingness to share emotions and feelings; and (3) technological readiness. Sharing emotions and feelings, as well as technological readiness, have been found positively associated with high posting behaviours.

Customers' opinions, comments and feedback on online platforms represent a crucial co-creation tool that must be better understood by businesses that aim to embrace the customer-centric philosophy. Despite the importance of the topic, only recently there has been interest in exploring the motives for and behaviours of customers' post-consumption comments and information sharing about a business on an e-service platform. Based on these findings, we put forward some relevant implications for theory and specific managerial strategies to be undertaken to exploit the potential of platforms.