Ubiquitous computing, contactless points, and distributed stores: a new place for shopping

Nowadays, retailing is subjected to constant changes due to the continuous advancements in technology (Pantano, 2014). In fact, the increasing computing capabilities, the mobile and wireless technologies improvements, as well as the development of flexible software architectures and automatic identification technologies support the ubiquitous access to data for both consumers and firms. As a consequence, these new systems modify the interface between clients and vendor, by providing new consumer-oriented services (Ngo and O’Cass, 2013; Pantano, 2014), as well as the customer behavior and corporate approach to retail process, by changing both the way customers access and consume the information, and the way firms and organizations reach clients and deliver the service (Kim, et al., 2009; Demirkan and Spohrer, 2014).