Bernd Schmitt, Columbia University

Ming-Hui Huang, National Taiwan University

Sanjay Sood, University of California, Los Angeles

Shuyi Hao, ICN Business School

AI is innovating how service experiences can be designed, curated, and delivered. Service that emphasizes experiential components, such as sensory, affective, cognitive, behavioral and social elements, are considered experiential service. Customer experience is multidimensional across multiple touchpoints, unfolds over the customer journey, can be enabled by various AI technologies, and can establish emotional connections with customers.

This special issue seeks to advance our understanding of how AI can enable experience innovation. By enabling personalization, adaptive interaction, and multisensory engagement, AI allows service providers to create new, innovative experiences and enables customers to participate in journeys that evolve dynamically with their needs and preferences. For examples, augmented and virtual reality technologies (AR/VR) are used in retailing to innovate experiences; extended-reality technologies (XR) are used to bring static museum exhibitions to life, mixed-reality technologies (MR) are used to blend real and virtual skill development, and AI technologies are used to enhance sports or entertainment experiences through digital images and surround sound.

Appel publié par Journal of Service Research. Lire l'appel complet sur le site de l'éditeur. Fiche de l'appel sur kerostig.

Potential topics

• How do AI technologies (e.g., generative AI, agentic AI, AR, VR, XR, MR) innovate service experiences, and what design principles help service providers create engaging and meaningful experiences?
• How should AI-enabled experiences be orchestrated across physical, digital, and extended-reality touchpoints throughout the service journey?
• How can service providers create and scale AI-enabled experience innovations for human customers, hybrid human-AI customers, or autonomous AI customers to generate favorable outcomes for customers, providers, and ecosystems?
• What new experiential consequences and innovation outcomes arise from AI, and how can they be conceptualized, measured, and managed over time?
• What ethical, societal, or governance challenges arise and how can AI-enabled experience innovation be designed, governed, and managed responsibly?

Timeline

• August 1, 2026: Submission window opens
• September 3, 2026: Full papers due
• September 30, 2026: Submissions close
• August 1, 2027: Special issue planned publication