Information Technologies and Consumers’ Well-Being: Latest Research and Future Research Directions

Abstract

Since our 2021 call for a special issue in the Journal of Interactive Marketing on Information Technologies and Consumers’ Well-Being, interest in this topic has continued to grow. The database Business Source Premier identifies 76 publications since 2021 that have “technology” in the title and include “well-being” in the author-supplied abstract, as well as 447 publications with both “technology” and “well-being” in the abstract. Calls for special issues on technology and wellbeing topics have also appeared in other major marketing journals in the last two years, including the Journal of Consumer Affairs and Psychology & Marketing. This ever-growing interest in the topic of new technologies and consumers’ well-being can be explained by considering, on one side, the unprecedented development in information and communications technologies, and, on the other side, the increased usage of such technologies by large numbers of consumers in many countries around the world. The accelerating role that the COVID-19 pandemic has had in this process has been acknowledged (Amankwah-Amoah et al. 2021), with the result that new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things, and augmented and virtual reality, among others, have become increasingly important in consumers’ everyday life and are changing consumers’ experiences in the context of products, services, and brands (Hoyer et al. 2020; Pantano and Scarpi 2022; Puntoni et al. 2021; Zarantonello and Schmitt 2023). Understanding how information technologies are affecting consumers’ well-being therefore represents an area of primary importance. A total of 39 papers from China, Finland, France, India, Italy, Lebanon, Poland, Türkiye, and the United Kingdom were submitted in response to our call for papers, and 12 of them successfully went through the review process and are presented in this special issue. These articles advance our understanding of the relationship between new technologies and consumers’ well-being from different perspectives and through the use of different research methodologies. The aim of this editorial is to discuss the state of current research on information technologies and consumers’ well-being. Accordingly, it provides an overview of the articles in the special issue and highlights how they contribute to the growing literature on the topic. It also identifies and outlines future research directions by indicating and discussing areas that require further investigation.