Call for Papers
Journal of Service Research Special Issue on
AI-Enabled Experience Innovation
Special Issue Editors:
Bernd Schmitt, Columbia University (bhs1@gsb.columbia.edu)
Ming-Hui Huang, National Taiwan University (huangmh@ntu.edu.tw)
Sanjay Sood, University of California, Los Angeles (sanjay.sood@anderson.ucla.edu)
Shuyi Hao, ICN Business School & CEREFIGE (shuyi.hao@icn-artem.com)
Submission Deadline: Full papers due September 30, 2026
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 (Schmitt 1999). Customer experience is multidimensional across multiple touchpoints (Verhoef et al. 2009), unfolds over the customer journey (Lemon and Verhoef 2016), can be enabled by various AI technologies (Ostrom et al. 2021), and can establish emotional connections with customers (Huang and Rust 2024).
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.
The special issue welcomes submissions from all disciplines with a service interest, such as consumer research, service marketing, strategic management, information systems, operations research, psychology, and sociology. Mixed methods blending conceptual, empirical, or computational approaches are encouraged. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
· 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?
Process and Timeline
Papers will undergo no more than two rounds of full peer review. After the second round, a final decision will be made to ensure timely publication. The special issue operates on a tight timeline, and authors should expect quick turnarounds for reviews and revisions. Papers may be submitted from August 1 to September 30, 2026. The special issue is planned to be published in August 2027, and accepted papers will be published online first.
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Ming-Hui Huang, PhD
Distinguished University Chair Professor, National Taiwan University
Fellow, Association for Information Systems (AIS)
Fellow, European Marketing Academy (EMAC)
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