Purpose This study defines a three-angled research plan to intensify the knowledge and development undergoing in the retail sector. It proposes a theoretical framework of the customer journey to explain the customers' intent to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) as a protective measure for interaction between the customer and the brand.Design/methodology/approach This study presents a research agenda from three-dimensional online search, ML and AI algorithms. This paper enhances the readers' understanding by reviewing the literature present in utilizing AI in the customer journey and presenting a theoretical framework.Findings Using AI tools like Chatbots, Recommenders, Virtual Assistance and Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) helps create improved brand awareness, better customer relationships marketing and personalized product modification.Originality/value This study intends to identify a research plan based on investigating customer journey trends in today's changing times with AI incorporation. The research provides a novel model framework of the customer journey by directing customers into different stages and providing different touchpoints in each stage, all supported with AI and ML.

A digital twin (DT) is a virtual representation of a physical object or activity that acts as its real-time digital equivalent. The authors evaluated the structure of research in the same field, and to do so, the authors used the techniques of bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer. This study scrutinizes the dynamics of scientific publications devoted to understanding DT application in the healthcare sector all over the world over the years. The documents were extracted from the database of Scopus. The evolution of the concept of DT is studied from documents, including research articles, conference papers, and book chapters, which helped forecast future research trends.

This article aims to scrutinize the dynamics of scientific publications devoted to optimizing the customer journey in the retail sector through the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and determines the status of existing research on the role of AI in the retail sector. The research objective was to analyse the pool of scientific publications from the Scopus database to analyse how emerging technologies have improved customer journey (pre-purchase, purchase, post-purchase). The research employed a publication search by article title, abstract and keywords to collect the data set from the Scopus database. The selected publications were visualized using the software VOSviewer 1.6.16.0, and Biblioshiny to perform bibliometric analyses. An initial sample of 356 research articles was collected. After reading the abstract and full article, a final corpus of 149 scientific publications over two decades (1989–2021) was analysed in the study. Our findings suggest the prominence of authors and journal publishing in implementing AI in retail to automate customer journey. The results highlight how the application of AI fosters in improving the different phases of customer journey among the retailing sectors. Banking and fashion are the retailing sectors that have major applications of AI in the customer journey. Further studies should be conducted to gain deeper insights into the emerging use of AI in other sectors of the economy. It was also found from the intensive literature review that in the purchasing and decision-making phase of the customer journey, the deployment of AI is the most. This study analysed the incorporation of AI into the customer journey to highlight its impact on retailing. This study contributes to the literature by adding the lenses of AI in key management areas in retailing.

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Purpose This paper aims to study the organisation and management of grey literature (GL) to select social science libraries. Further, the study is an attempt to make known the types of GL; extent of demand and the frequency of use of GL; GL collection in other languages; workshops or training programmes or seminars for GL; bibliographic control for GL, etc., in select social science libraries. Design/methodology/approach A survey with the help of a questionnaire followed by interviews was conducted among the social science libraries understudy to explore the issues and challenges involved in organizing and managing GL. Findings The study finds that 83.3% of libraries have a separate wing for the management of GL and the majority of the GL acquired by the library are accessed through compact disc and are present in digital form access via online public access catalog. Originality/value The paper explores the organisation and management of GL by social science libraries, which is a unique study on its own as the management of GL is not much popular here in India. The study paves the path for more issues to be explored in the area i.e. GL.