E-commerce has been gradually changing the nature of labor markets. The opportunities for international and national labor arbitrage, repackaging of the work units into modules that can be handled by various agents (including automated bots), co-creation by unpaid volunteers, emergence of purpose-oriented more or less temporary virtual firms, mass platform-run transportation and delivery services, and other phenomena that unmoor work from the brick-and-mortar abiding organizations can be expected to capture an ever-growing part of the labor markets. They also affect the traditional labor arrangements. Yet most of the research work on e-commerce marketplaces focuses on the sales of goods. The opening paper in this International Journal of Electronic Commerce (IJEC) issue steps into the domain of service marketplaces built around the sale of freelancing labor. The work of Zhijuan Hong, Hui Zhu, and Kunxiang Dong investigates the operation of labor markets where the buyers who need a service (say, a system design) specify a number of requirements and seek out sellers (say, system developers) who state their own requirements and capabilities. A more or less formal multiattribute auction ensues. The authors ask this broad research question: How would the inclusion of trust-building mechanisms, such as buyer requirements for a guarantee of the work by the potential labor seller, change the operation of such a marketplace? The authors present and empirically validate a model that characterizes the changes in freelancers’ participation and bidding with such a scheme. Brands are created, developed, evolved, harmed, and sometimes killed by their posts on social media, and by the online reactions to these posts, which are the expressions of the engagement with the brand. As argue the authors of the second paper, the effectiveness of the posts would be affected positively if the brands differentiated the posts among the stages of the customers’ journey, from preto postconsumption. Joris Demmers, Jesse W.J. Weltevreden, and Willemijn M. van Dolen dichotomize the posts into informational and entertaining, along with their other differentiating attributes. The researchers present and test their model of consumer engagement, which is validated empirically in the context of the dominant social network site. The results show the value that the brands can draw from such a stage-based approach to engaging consumers with social media posts. Multichannel approach has become almost de rigueur for retailers. Actually, there are many and various multichannel approaches, and a proper combination of and interaction among channel deployments sometimes makes (as opposed to breaks) the retailer. Crosschannel delivery, such as click-and-collect or order-in-store-receive-at-home (with a possible skillful upselling and cross-selling), is one broad method that has been found effective. Here, Anja Weber and Erik Maier study empirically just how effective it is in counteracting “research shopping,” that is, in preventing prepurchase competitive migration. The results surface the conditions under which the cross-channel delivery can indeed help to reduce the migration of a researching customer to a competitor. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCE 2020, VOL. 24, NO. 1, 1–13 https://doi.org/10.1080/10864415.2019.1683702

中文翻译：

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编者介绍

电子商务正在逐渐改变劳动力市场的性质。国际和国内劳动力套利的机会，将工作单元重新打包成可由各种代理（包括自动化机器人）处理的模块，由无偿志愿者共同创造，或多或少以目的为导向的虚拟公司的出现，大众平台运营的运输和送货服务，以及其他让实体组织停止工作的现象，预计将占据劳动力市场不断增长的一部分。它们也影响了传统的劳动力安排。然而，电子商务市场的大部分研究工作都集中在商品的销售上。本期《国际电子商务杂志》(IJEC) 中的开篇论文涉足了围绕自由职业劳动力销售而建立的服务市场领域。Jijuan Hong、Hui Zhu 和 Kunxiang Dong 的工作调查了劳动力市场的运作，在那里需要服务（例如系统设计）的买家指定了一些要求，并寻找卖家（例如系统开发人员）来说明他们的需求。自己的要求和能力。随之而来的是或多或少正式的多属性拍卖。作者提出了这个广泛的研究问题：如何纳入信任建立机制，例如买方要求潜在劳动力卖方保证工作，改变这样一个市场的运作？作者提出并凭经验验证了一个模型，该模型描述了自由职业者参与和竞标此类计划的变化。品牌被他们在社交媒体上的帖子以及对这些帖子的在线反应所创造、发展、发展、损害，有时甚至被扼杀，这些帖子是与品牌互动的表达。正如第二篇论文的作者所说，如果品牌在消费者旅程的各个阶段（从消费前到消费后）区分帖子，帖子的有效性将受到积极影响。Joris Demmers、Jesse WJ Weltevreden 和 Willemijn M. van Dolen 将帖子分为信息性和娱乐性，以及其他差异化属性。研究人员展示并测试了他们的消费者参与模型，这在占主导地位的社交网站的背景下得到了实证验证。结果表明，品牌可以从这种基于阶段的方法中汲取价值，以通过社交媒体帖子吸引消费者。多渠道方法几乎已成为零售商的必备品。实际上，多渠道方法有很多种，渠道部署之间的适当组合和交互有时会使（而不是破坏）零售商。跨渠道交付，例如点击取货或店内订单在家接收（可能有技巧的追加销售和交叉销售），是一种已被证明有效的广泛方法。在这里，Anja Weber 和 Erik Maier 凭经验研究了它在抵消“研究购物”方面的有效性，即防止预购竞争性迁移。结果显示了跨渠道交付确实可以帮助减少研究客户向竞争对手迁移的条件。2020 年国际电子商务杂志，第一卷 24，没有。1, 1–13 https://doi.org/10.1080/10864415.2019.1683702