Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, Volume 13, Issue 1, Year 2022 by Romanian Distribution Committee

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Editorial: Customer Experience and Uncertainty, the Phygital CX Framework, Economics and the Paradoxes of the Evolution We Are In

Starting from relevant topics – books that changed our lives – the reputed CX practitioner Colin Shaw (2021) introduced us last year in a discussion suggesting some main ideas, such as: how important is for marketers the Customer Experience (CX), because people buy experiences (and not products or services); as nobody (customer, student, or employee) is in the middle of the spectrum, avoid to serve no one because of considering the “average” of a group of people; the need of having a purpose, than a new purpose, and enjoying the journey taken to reach your goal; first experiment what you are trying to change; cultivate good habits to ensure your personality’s anchor, being clear and focused, meeting deadlines, refueling and reimagining yourself; learn from failures on the path to became successful. In March this year the reputed McKinsey & Company (2022) invited us to see essential reading on topics that matter, such as: building company’s resilience while facing unpredictable threats or change; quickly responding to the rapidly shifting environment with the help of new operating models; building resilience now by going on the path to sustainable, inclusive growth; enhancing organizations’ MRM (Model Risk Management) framework capabilities (including risk culture, standards, and procedures) and upgrading their validation resources with MRM 2.0 firmly on the organizations’ agenda etc. The above-mentioned message from McKinsey Publishing underlined that within the current global context business leaders are left to seize and struggle with uncertainty. Coming

back to the Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy (a world’s CX consultancy and training organizations), Colin Shaw (2019), it is worth recalling his thoughts (recommended again recently) on why uncertainty can destroy CX, taking into account how much is customer behavior influenced by uncertainty (considering the implications of different theories such as the well-known Prospect Theory), that leads, for instance, to mental shortcuts in determining the likelihood of an outcome. According to Shaw, the challenge remains how: to inject certainty into CX when communicating with customers, knowing their desire to feel safe and prepared, and not forgetting both that the reality here is their perception, and that their behavior is influenced by emotions (associated with their reaction to risk and uncertainty) evoked by CX and which can drive or destroy value for an organization; to build customer loyalty strategically based on knowing customers feelings about uncertainty in the CX provided by an organization. Very recently, the reputed Founder of the modern experiential marketing mix (7Es) and the Phygital ecosystem to design CX in the metaverse Wided Batat (2022) continued to delve deeper into the significant topic of phygital by proposing the phygital CX (PH-CX) as a new holistic framework guaranteeing a value delivery continuum by connecting offline and online offerings. Some years ago (Purcarea, 2018), we approached the future of retail impacted by the smart phygital era, and more recently (Purcarea et al., 2022) we focused, among other aspects, on retailers’ phygital strategies and the sustainable smart store of the future putting CX in the middle of our approach. Introducing the above-mentioned PH-CX framework, the recognized digital marketing expert in CX and digital transformation Wided Batat is going beyond channel logic, and based on both customer journeys’ fluidification (from offline to online and in the opposite manner), one hand, and consumers’ values capturing and responding to consumers’ tangible and intangible needs, other hand, makes it possible the designing of a CX inspiring conviction (enabled by the identification of the fundamental constituents of the phygital CX strategy). So, it is no surprise, for instance, that the well-known mobile engagement platform and Tier 1 Aggregator Vibes (2022) will cover – in its panel discussion of an exclusive webinar organized on April 14, 2022 – among the four points one entitled “How Mobile Wallet can serve as a bridge between digital and in-store experiences”. Many years ago, Dunn and Pressman (2005) analyzed the economic contributions of John Kenneth Galbraith starting from the fact that Galbraith’s contributions can be viewed both negatively, and positively. Within this framework, they highlighted, among other aspects, that: “By eschewing the study of power and change, economists have failed to address pressing social trends. For Galbraith (1973b), ‘in eliding power – in making economics a nonpolitical subject – neoclassical theory, by the same process, destroys its relation with the real world’ (p. 2). In addition, it contributes little to contemporary political debates by failing to illuminate many of the serious social concerns of modern society – war, environmental decay and, of course, poverty”. Six years after this analysis, Popescu and Comănescu (2011) brought to our attention that: “Today, we are witnessing a disproportionate development; as technologies to produce, we

go in progress, but as morality of their application, we are going backwards! To be threatened by the results of our minds and hands are a paradox of the evolution we are in!” (p. 88). Three years ago, Geoffrey M. Hodgson (2019), Professor in Management at the Institute for International Management, Loughborough University London, UK, showed, among other aspects, in the instruction to a challenging book, that: “The Great Financial Crash of 2008 had several effects, not only on the global economy, but also on global politics and economic policy… Because of current global economic problems and the manifest limitations of mainstream economics, young scholars are attracted to heterodoxy… Heterodox achievements have received insufficient attention and constructive development, largely because there are inadequate incentives to engage with them. Mainstream economics selects the issues that it deems worthwhile and creates opportunities for those who participate in its community. Of course, some people are devoted to scientific truth and might contribute to a heterodox discussion anyway. But even honourable altruists can have mortgages to pay and kids to feed. Eventually, moral philanthropists need remuneration. Pecuniary as well as moral incentives for researchers are important. The mainstream perpetuates itself through its access to power and resources, and with its chosen metrics of evaluation… David Colander and Craig Freedman (2019) argued that economics ‘went wrong’ when the Chicago school of Milton Friedman and others conjoined their theory with their strident political views, and then gained influence within the profession. The history of Cambridge economics shows that the conflation of theory with policy was not unique to Chicago or to pro-market economists. From the 1960s, positive feedback between Chicago-style rightists and Cambridge-style leftists helped the overpoliticization of economics as a whole. Economics has suffered as a result…”. And it is still suffering! Coming back to March this year, it is worth making reference to: • An article published in the blog section “Future Development” of the reputed The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, and authored by Indermit Gill (2022), Nonresident Senior Fellow Global Economy and Development, Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions - World Bank: “Like the novel coronavirus, the latest crisis arrived in a largely unexpected form—in its scale and ferocity, in its location, and in the global response to it. Much will depend on what happens next. But it’s already clear that higher food and energy prices— along with supply shortages—will be the immediate inflictor of pain for low- and middle-income economies. Many of the world’s developing economies remain debilitated by the pandemic. The healthy recovery that advanced economies have experienced over the past year has largely bypassed them”; • The fact that just two years ago we showed in an article – entitled “Priorities, Resources, and Working under the Current Heavy Pressures Following the Right Protocols. Solidarity and Empathy” – how while navigating a context where the frontal approach to uncertainty is only “prospective” (knowing, of course, that there is a way where there is a will) it is essential to

remind ourselves of the wise words of the venerable Professor Vasile Stănescu, Honorary Member of the Romanian Academy, and also a Honorary Member of the Romanian Distribution Committee: “Life is… a continuous oscillation between arrival and departure, between light and shadow… I want to hear the silence of things (Emil Cioran) and the music of spheres (Pitagora), because when you stop believing, in fact, you stop existing, you stop living history… Our world has entered a new temporality ... we are projected by events… waking up captives, in a continuous tension… Today’s world does not yet exercise common destiny of human beings wherever they are, of solidarity and empathy ... there are major imbalances ... The competition took a dramatic end, the fight being carried out between values and interests… We live in an ambivalence incapable of solving the idea of continuity… Endangered is the factor of cohesion and mobilization of society… the fragility and vulnerability of our planet’s projection are in an ambivalence that give us cold chills…” (Purcarea, 2020). Theodor Valentin Purcărea Editor-in-Chief References Dunn, S. P. & Pressman, S., 2005. The Economic Contributions of John Kenneth Galbraith, Review of Political Economy (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group), Volume 17, Number 2, 161–209, April 2005, pp. 161, 183. DOI: 10.1080=09538250500067254. Gill, I., 2022. Developing economies must act now to dampen the shocks from the Ukraine conflict, The Brookings Institution Blog, Future Development, Tuesday, March 8, 2022. [online] Available at <https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2022/03/08/developing-economies-must-act-now-to-dampenthe-shocks-from-the-ukraine-conflict/?> [Accessed 13 March 2022]. Hodgson, G. M. Introduction, Monograph Chapter, in “Is There a Future for Heterodox Economics? Institutions, Ideology and a Scientific Community,” Edward Elgar Publishing, Collection: Economics 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781789901597.00005 McKinsey & Company, 2022. How resilient are you? McKinsey Publishing, New from McKinsey & Company, 23.03.2022 19:23, Curated by Eleni Kostopoulos, a digital publishing manager based in New York. Popescu, C., Comănescu, M., 2011. Towards the spiritualization of economics. [pdf] ECTAP / Theoretical and Applied Economics (TAE), Vol. XVIII (2011), No. 7(560), pp. 76-92. Available at <615_ro.pdf> [Accessed 8 May 2014]. Purcarea, T., 2018. The Future of Retail Impacted by the Smart Phygital Era, Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, vol. 9(3), pp. 34-46, September. Purcărea, T.; Ioan-Franc, V.; Ionescu, Ş.-A.; Purcărea, I.M.; Purcărea, V.L.; Purcărea, I.; Mateescu-Soare, M.C.; Platon, O.-E.; Orzan, A.-O. Major Shifts in Sustainable Consumer Behavior in Romania and Retailers’ Priorities in Agilely Adapting to It. Sustainability 2022, 14, 1627. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14031627. Purcarea, T., 2020. Priorities, Resources, and Working under the Current Heavy Pressures Following the Right Protocols. Solidarity and Empathy, Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, vol. 11(1), pp. 10-15, March. Shaw, C., 2019. Why uncertainty can destroy your customer experience, Beyond Philosophy, May 31, 2019, [online] Available at <https://beyondphilosophy.com/why-uncertainty-can-destroy-your-customer-experience/?> [Accessed 31 March 2022]. Shaw, C., 2021. 7 Books that changed our lives, will they change yours? – Essential summer reading, Beyond Philosophy, July 20, 2021. [online] Available at <https://beyondphilosophy.com/7-books-that-changed-our-liveswill-they-change-yours-essential-summer-reading-blog/?> [Accessed 10 March 2022]. Vibes, 2022. Tap Here for Success! Join Vibes for a Webinar on Mobile Wallet, The Vibes Team, <vibesmarketing@vibes.com>, 08.04.2022, 20:01. Wided Batat (2022) What does phygital really mean? A conceptual introduction to the phygital customer experience (PH-CX) framework, Journal of Strategic Marketing, DOI: 10.1080/0965254X.2022.2059775.

Developing information and communications technology to provide more intelligence and leverage more wisdom for a dramatically changing World -Part 1-

Prof. Eng. Ph.D. Victor GREU Abstract The paper analyses the context of the dramatic trends of the global processes in the Earth ecosystem, affecting a diversity of domains (which have the potential to be extended almost randomly, because of the accumulated negative premises of the World context), considering also the benefic ways Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is already influencing the humankind and our planet, with the expectation that this influence will be continued under the new conditions. It is very important to analyse such premises of the complex World context, in order to identify the optimal or at least the sustainable ways ICT could be further developed in order to support the approaching and facing of the most probable and dramatical changes/processes/events which would have the potential to strongly affect the life quality on Earth and even the whole planetary ecosystem. Although sometimes it is considered that the accumulated negative premises are not critical, yet, for example in the climate changes case (when the opinion is already more than dubitable), as prominent challenge for the Earth and humankind, another significant difference versus the past is the Earth resources fading critical stage (including food), which already began to generate cascades of dramatical consequences in more and more domains, from energy to social and geopolitical crises. As a consequence of such negative context premises for the Earth ecosystem evolution, it is necessary to analyse all the possibilities of humankind to mitigate these trends/challenges, including first the well-known potential of ICT to influence the World and support IS/KBS. The expected challenges, dilemmas and dramatical changes/crises, we will have to face more and more, must be approached by rational and complicate analyses, in spite of the extreme uncertainty levels these problems could have, leveraging our success chances if using for such purposes all the acquired and potential power of ICT advances, including AI along with HI and wisdom. Among the priorities of the rational mentioned analyses, we consider, with priority, the necessity of the research for new alternative energy and materials (including food) solutions, along with recycling and saving the actual but fading Earth resources. This crucial challenge will determine the ways the World progress, based on production and consummation, could be continued in a sustainable manner, a longer or a shorter period of time, i.e., it will define the balance between apogee and survival, on Earth. Another significant issue, making the difference over the past, is given by the extreme urgency and last mile stage World is in, before being too late! Planning a long road by concrete steps, we think that the systemic and structural approaches should be based on some value/relevant principles, criteria and examples, as our paper shortly presents. As a principle

consequence of considering ICT influence at planetary scale, i.e., a real leverage factor for all human activity domains, being also a huge consumer of energy and materials, is to carefully analyse both positive and eventual negative issues of ICT exponential evolution, but pointing just the necessity to adapt the ICT future pace and systemic structure to the dramatical context premises, understanding that although some development areas/directions should be slowed down, other could be faster. This way, the analysis of ICT advances issues, where artificial intelligence (AI), among others, is prominent, remains the starting point, as the power of all ICT products, services or applications, considering, still, the refined knowledge which could reconfigure the weights of different areas of applications, must be the basic potential of computing and networking power to be provided where World priority goals will arise. Following such goals, but not being limited to them, our analysis is based on relevant cases/examples, as a support for their eventual integration in useful studies or advices for incumbents, or reference for everyone - an education component, necessary to face the emerging dramatical/dynamic World. We consider that the education should be the main mass way to refine the knowledge for the appropriate actions everyone has to understand, in the dynamic mentioned World and ICT context, but it is also clear that we could not expect the fast appearance of necessary refined knowledge, nor the consequent actions, just knowing the humankind history. Identifying the “refined knowledge” and the “necessity” will rise more and more complex, complicate and difficult problems, but here comes the expected power of ICT and AI, which has the potential to bring the data from all areas, to extract the relevant information and then to imply humans in all associated processes of creation/innovation, education, debating and eventually decision, providing the appropriate approach and speed for each category, case and stage. Analysing sophisticated examples of actual AI applications, we observe that the reality is still more challenging, as for providing only the necessary data, ICT impact on IS/KBS is huge and must be optimized because of the hidden costs. Under the hidden costs, we have to include more than energy and material resources, but also innovation and management necessary to integrate relevant data at Earth scale based on refined knowledge models, i.e., a lot of studies, models, methods and AI along with human intelligence (HI). The relevance of these examples is much beyond the application domain and context, as we propose to extract from it the huge potential of ICT/AI/HI to extrapolate such kind of applications to a higher level of IS/KBS, in order to optimize other, more complex processes, at Earth scale, based on their mentioned power and advances, but using the appropriate refined knowledge each time. We have to use all the chances and human resources to continue a sustainable development of our ecosystem, including the power of ICT/AI necessary advances we just mentioned above. When speaking about the sustainable development of our ecosystem, each time we have to see first the premises of the actual/normal development which are less sustainable or to carefully analyse the challenges which lead to such difficult evolutions. On the other hand, it is necessary to analyse such premises/challenges and eventually address the appropriate, even preliminary, solutions to mitigate them. One of the analysed examples (the World actual chip shortage crisis) just showed the emergence and realism of such approach, along with useful conclusions, as always we have to find first the causes/premises which led to a crisis/problem, in order to have chances to optimally solve it. Considering the huge industry around ICT and beyond, it is naturally to keep (and spread) the optimism, especially for this global chip shortage, but we consider that it is mandatory to maintain a rigorous vigilance about such systemic and overwhelming risk/crises (like chip shortage), especially before having confidence that we have got over them and most of all, that we have learned all the lessons to prevent/manage them for future. The paper aim is also to propose some urgently needed orientations, observing that the Earth civilization history could be seen as long, considering human life and the incredible progress we made, although at Universe scale it is only a short scenario that our recent history appears to make it shorter. ICT exponential speed of development, leading to a similar IS/KBS pace evolution, sometimes could “add” to the mentioned premises toward a shorter scenario, but now, more than before, it is important to learn from history, including ICT recent evolution, in order to make the scenario longer, in a sustainable manner. For the analysed dramatical Earth ecosystem context, full of uncertainty, our opinion/proposal, a general but realistic and practical approach, is that, when analysing ICT development actual resources and challenges, we should follow step by step a multi-fold goal for our future World, which should include: Providing support for the urgent/emergent research/production/actions to mitigate the World crises, like alternative energy resources, new and recycled materials etc.; Searching solutions to approximately continue Moore Law and similar resources of ICT; Identifying challenges that determine reconfiguration of performance and areas of priorities for ICT advances; Export ideas, models, algorithms and conclusions from ICT experience of development, in dramatical context premises, to other human activity domains; Search principles and models of optimizating the AI-HI combination in order to leverage knowledge refining for a sustainable World progress. Even step by step and long time, such generous and consistent results will not be easy to achieve, but it is essential to agree that they could have a huge importance in terms of opportunity and impact, for the present and future of our Earth ecosystem.

The paper shortly analyses some relevant examples of ICT actual resources and challenges, which would be lessons to consider, for future sustainable development, even beyond the sphere of ICT, due to the ICT impact over the entire IS/KBS, leading this way to the benefic multi-disciplinary results/innovations. Beyond the sphere of ICT could mean not only all the linked industries, as ICT impact covers almost all domains of human activity. More than these, the actual and emerging dramatical context, and especially the material crises, will expect research and solutions in many industries, like chemistry, food and of course energy, including everywhere ICT will certainly come with support and added value. Among the examples, the spectacular advance of microscopy could push toward many research areas and even industries (among other, biotechnology, medicine, chemistry and food), just in the above-mentioned struggle to find new material resources or useful features, starting from innovations at the nanoscale domain and meeting the research goals, with a higher speed and accuracy. The example of the crucial field of processors development (a superconducting CPU from Japan) is also very relevant when facing the energy crisis, was above analysed. Here we observed an accumulation of many factors, including both ICT new resources and challenges issues, as 2 (or soon 8) percent of the world’s electricity is consumed by World data centers, which is not only huge, but it is really a signal of alarm (especially considering the emergent energy crises) about the consequences of ICT exponential development at planetary scale, we also repeatedly presented, revealing in the same time the necessity of a radical change, i.e., a new paradigm of advancing ICT/CPU. An important conclusion is that the future ICT expected solutions, along with other actions generally intended for the World urgent crises, should not be necessary only in the direction of intensively advance in the areas already started for improvements of the performances in the associated domains, but (and sometimes, on the contrary) in the new directions, i.e., changing the paradigm or the way of thinking, or simply changing the humankind/society behaviours that are not sustainable. These ideas are also confirmed, in the huge industry of CPU innovations, by another example of new model of CPU (from Switzerland), above presented, which seems to provide a substantial gain in the desired energy efficiency, but it comes also with an impressing increase of speed. Our opinion is that, in this area of ICT/CPU improvements, any relevant research/result is more than expected/benefic, but it is also true that each case must be analysed in the larger context of associated applications. In this case, we believe that the relevance/importance of results is given by the fact that generally we do not need state-of-the-art performance in all applications and consequently we could have a great sustainable progress if there is a diversity of applications, counting huge cost savings at planetary scale. More than these, we think that, from this example, the idea of better matching performances with applications levels and cost is a very relevant criteria for ICT (and other industries too) sustainable development, in order to face the energy and materials crises to come. On this line, it is relevant to consider the huge area of IoT applications, where the diversity and the number of applications at Earth scale will be so high, as the mentioned matching is the main criteria of development and optimization and could provide just the expected savings. The paper final conclusion is that, after referring only to the first step of the multi-goal approach we have proposed (support for the urgent/emergent research/production/actions to mitigate the World crises), a further analysis is needed and naturally to be continued, without considering that it would be exhaustive, but keep thinking that the huge context of ICT sustainable development is crucial for mitigating the consequences of emergent World dramatical changes/crises. Keywords: changing/dynamic normality, superconducting CPU, chip shortage, deep learning microscopy, Earth resources fading, artificial intelligence, information and communications technology sustainable development, refining knowledge, information society, knowledge-based society JEL Classification: L63; L86; M15; O31; O33

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change -Stephen Hawking 1. Premises and expectations for the Information and Communications Technology, in the deeply changing Earth ecosystem We are used to live in a World where the most impressive news come fast with the latest incredible products, services or applications of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT), but, lately, this normality has changed.

Perhaps many major events, from the last years, could be considered as impressive changes examples, but the changing/dynamic normality appears to be starting with the Covid 19 pandemic, and now it is blowing by dramatical scenes of Ukraine war, mentioning just the actual and prominent tips of icebergs that seem to be the appropriate metaphor for a probable future we have to live in. Of course, this is only a generic approach (as extreme potential image) of the complex and still dramatic trends of the global processes which we really can see in the Earth ecosystem, affecting a diversity of domains, which have the potential to be extended almost randomly, because of the accumulated negative premises of the World context, but we have to consider also the benefic ways ICT is already influencing the humankind and our planet, with the expectation that this influence will be continued under the new conditions. With simple words, it is very important to analyse such premises of the complex World context, in order to identify the optimal or at least the sustainable ways ICT could be further developed in order to support the approaching and facing of the most probable and dramatical changes/processes/events which would have the potential to strongly affect the life quality on Earth and even the whole planetary ecosystem. It is also important to try to define from the beginning the relevant elements of the context premises, because other way the subject could appear inconsistent and eventually at least inopportune (or even a panicky approach), considering the complex and mixed (positive and negative) major events of the World recent (or not) history. Without intending to open a socio-historical approach, we could recall other examples of history events or periods, including wars, pandemics, economical crises or (industrial) revolutions, as it is possible to observe a plenty of dramatical changes and challenges/trends, which have been also considered major for the humankind evolution and even survival, in shorter or longer periods. The special relevance and significance of the actual mentioned context premises could be clearer if we add some other examples of challenges/trends/events, like climate changes, Earth resources fading, social unbalances or other potential crises, like the emergent energy/food/materials or geopolitical ones. Still, one could say that essentially “nothing is new under the sun”, meaning that such “turbulences” of the World ecosystem are, in fact, a well-known and expected/inherent characteristic of the humankind evolution on planet Earth. We also agree, in a way, with such opinion, but the new significance, we want to analyse, is coming from the relevance of the actual stage of humankind evolution on Earth, which have accumulated, mainly positive but also negative, premises of the recent history, facing in fact what we called a race for a balance between progress and survival [3]. Perhaps it is even more relevant if we consider this actual stage a sort of apogee and see, today, the level of dramatism as a humankind race for a balance between apogee and survival, because in a such picture/expression, it is no doubt, we could observe the extreme high position our civilization is in, by the huge difference created in years of incredible progress and the inacceptable perspective of losing the survival race. If one could consider that the accumulated negative premises are not critical, yet, for the climate changes (when the opinion is already more than dubitable), as prominent challenge for the Earth and humankind, another significant difference versus the past is the Earth

resources fading critical stage (including food), which already began to generate cascades of dramatical consequences in more and more domains, from energy to social and geopolitical crises. As a consequence of such negative context premises for the Earth ecosystem evolution, it is necessary to analyse all the possibilities of humankind to mitigate these trends/challenges, including first the well-known potential of ICT to influence the World and support the information society (IS) on the way towards the knowledge-based society (KBS), as we already presented [16][12]. In fact, the essence, the opportunity and the urgency of such analyses could be expressed by a simplified example, considering that, in a large desert land/context, any person should think twice before consuming the last reserves of food and water. This way, it is sure that, keeping the proportions of complexity, the expected challenges, dilemmas and dramatical changes/crises, we will have to face more and more, must be approached by rational and complicate analyses, in spite of the extreme uncertainty levels these problems could have, leveraging our success chances if using for such purposes all the acquired and potential power of ICT advances, including artificial intelligence (AI) along with human intelligence (HI) and …wisdom[15][6][9][14][17][11][13]. A special and prominent role, among the priorities of the rational mentioned analyses, must be considered the necessity of the research for new alternative energy and materials (including food) solutions, along with recycling and saving the actual but fading Earth resources. This crucial challenge will determine the ways the World progress, based on production and consummation, could be continued in a sustainable manner, a longer or a shorter period of time, i.e., it will define the mentioned balance between apogee and survival, on Earth. It is obvious that such general (but still necessary and benefic) goal could be approached only by successive and concrete steps, keeping in mind, as much as possible, all global and specific criteria that should be largely identified and agreed at planetary scale, although this condition is perhaps the most difficult of all, as the World history just proved again and again that humankind just tried to delay to recognize and ultimately act as the worst scenarios appear more and more probable. Here we have to point another significant issue, making the difference over the past, which must be given by the extreme urgency and last mile stage World is in, before being too late! On the long road of the mentioned concrete steps, we think that the systemic and structural approaches should be based on some value/relevant principles, criteria and examples. One of the ideas that we already approached [16][12], is to consider the practical importance of the general context of ICT development, due to the crucial role of ICT in IS toward KBS and to the necessity to agree that refining knowledge is essential in the mentioned stage World is in, recalling that … Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change (Stephen Hawking). As a principle consequence of considering ICT influence at planetary scale, i.e., a real leverage factor for all human activity domains, being also a huge consumer of energy and materials, is to carefully analyse both positive and eventual negative issues of ICT exponential evolution, but pointing just the necessity to adapt the ICT future pace and systemic structure to

the dramatical context premises, understanding that although some development areas/directions should be slowed down, other could be faster. This way, the analysis of ICT advances issues, where AI, among others, is prominent, remains the starting point, as the power of all ICT products, services or applications, considering, still, the refined knowledge which could reconfigure the weights of different areas of applications, must be the basic potential of computing and networking power to be provided where World priorities will arise. Starting from such goals, but not being limited to them, our analyses will be based on relevant cases/examples, as a support for their eventual integration in useful studies or advices for incumbents, or reference for everyone - an education component, necessary to face the emerging dramatical/dynamic World. In fact, we consider that the education should be the main mass way to refine the knowledge for the appropriate actions everyone has to understand, in the dynamic mentioned World and ICT context, but it is also clear that we could not expect the fast appearance of necessary refined knowledge, nor the consequent actions, just knowing the humankind history. This way we have just arrived to the point where the ICT optimization development could serve the most important social need of the emerging World, by contributions to the refined knowledge and to the critical and fast necessary decisions, at planetary scale and also at individual level. If this purpose could appear not new, then we have to analyse and further understand, by examples, the deeper and concrete meanings of the above-mentioned general terms, like “necessary” and again “refined knowledge”, in each of the stages/moments of the emerging dramatical/dynamic World. It is clear that identifying the “refined knowledge” and the “necessity” will rise more and more complex, complicate and difficult problems, but here comes the expected power of ICT and AI, which has the potential to bring the data from all areas, to extract the relevant information and then to imply humans in all associated processes of creation/innovation, education, debating and eventually decision, providing the appropriate approach and speed for each category, case and stage. In order to have a relevant picture of the expected power of ICT and AI, an example of its necessity, even if we have to notice that it is aiming a “peace” scenario, i.e., a normal evolution of IS/KBS (but even this way important challenges should be also considered), is given by [5]: <<Consider the following scenario where a typical driver, John gets into his car in the morning and turns on the ignition. A built-in innovative application in the car greets him and asks him if he is going to work based on the time of the day. John responds by saying “yes” and the app replies that the vehicle performance has been optimized for the trip. The built-in system uses the GIS system, road grade data, and speed limits data to create an optimal velocity profile. As John starts driving and is approaching Recker road to turn left, the app informs John about a road repair on Recker road for a 1-mile stretch on his route up to 3pm that day. The app suggests that John should continue driving and take the next left on Power Road. John follows the suggestion and answers a text message that he receives from his collaborator. As he is answering the text message, his car drifts into the neighboring lane. The app immediately notifies John of the drift who quickly adjusts his driving. As John approaches his workplace,

he drives towards Lot 1 where he usually parks. The app informs John that there are only 2 parking spots open in Lot 1. As John is already running late for a meeting, he decides to directly drive to the next parking lot, Lot 2, to avoid spending the time looking for the 2 empty spots in Lot 1. As John enters Lot 2 and is driving towards one of the empty spots, he gets too close to one of the parked cars. The app immediately warns John of a collision. John quickly adjusts his car away from the parked cars and parks in an empty spot. The app logs tracking data about John’s style of driving on the server for future use.>> One could say that such scenarios are already largely analysed and the industry is working to develop ICT/AI in this direction, so we could say that it is just a face of the normality we already expect and build, as we pointed at our paper beginning. The reality of this evolution is still more challenging, as for providing only the necessary data, ICT impact on IS/KBS is huge and must be optimized because of the hidden costs, as it is further suggested: “In order to build apps for automobiles, access to a number of data sets from various sources is required. Some of this is real-time data that is continuously being updated. Data related to traffic, road repairs, emergencies, accidents, driving habits, maps, parking, fuel economy data, household data, diagnosis data, etc. would be required. Various automotive apps could be built that focus on reducing energy consumption, reducing emissions, provide fuel economy guidance that is based on actual vehicle data, road conditions, traffic, and most importantly personal driving habits and ways to improve them. It is important to effectively integrate data such that the data is tied to a meaningful and rich data model that can be queried by these innovative applications.” Under the hidden costs, we have to include more than energy and material resources, but also innovation and management necessary to integrate relevant data at Earth scale based on refined knowledge models, i.e., a lot of studies, models, methods and AI/HI. It is worth to remember, still, that this is only a normality example, but the accumulated negative consequences (from costs and challenges and risks) could be considerable on medium and long term. By our opinion, the relevance of this example is much beyond the application domain and context, as we propose to extract from it the huge potential of ICT/AI/HI to extrapolate such kind of applications to a higher level of IS/KBS, in order to optimize other, more complex processes, at Earth scale, based on their mentioned power and advances, but using the appropriate refined knowledge each time. Now it is clear how the signification of this example could help us to have a realistic picture of what we have to realize, at Earth scale, under dramatical World changes, if, for the normal conditions and purposes of the example, the data, models and costs are as above suggested. Still, we have to use all the chances and human resources to continue a sustainable development of our ecosystem, including the power of ICT/AI necessary advances we just mentioned above. We consider that, when speaking about the sustainable development of our ecosystem, each time we have to see first the premises of the actual/normal development which are less sustainable or to carefully analyse the challenges which lead to such difficult evolutions.

On the other hand, it is necessary to analyse such premises/challenges and eventually address the appropriate, even preliminary, solutions to mitigate them. On this way, going further from the observations we have just made, the next example is a realistic approach, as it focuses on the complex role of managing data/information at Earth scale [2]: “… And in the 21st century this information is being generated ever faster. In its latest survey of data generated per minute in 2018, Domo, a cloud service, listed more than 97,000 hours of video streamed by Netflix users, nearly 4.5 million videos watched on YouTube, just over 18 million forecast requests on the Weather Channel, and more than 3 quadrillion bytes (3.1 petabytes) of other Internet data used in the United States alone. By 2016, the annual global data-creation rate sur passed 16 ZB (a zettabyte is 1021 B), and by 2025, it is expected to rise by another order of magnitude—that is, to about 160 ZB or 1023 B.” Although are referring to general domains of data, step by step such analyses will lead us to the core of the problems, from ICT resources to refining knowledge, as it is further presented: “These quantities lead to some obvious questions. Only a fraction of the data flood could be stored, but which part should that be? Challenges of storage are obvious even if less than 1 percent of this flow gets preserved. And for whatever we decide to store, the next question is how long should the data be preserved. No storage need last forever, but what is the optimal span? The highest prefix in the international system of units is yotta, Y = 1024. We’ll have that many bytes within a decade. And once we start creating more than 50 trillion bytes of information per person per year, will there be any real chance of making effective use of it? It is easier to find new prefixes for large databases than to decide how large is large enough. After all, there are fundamental differences between accumulated data, useful information, and insightful knowledge.” Recalling the mentioned challenges about the data, models and costs, if the previous case referred to the data, although these imply the necessary storage, the next example leads us to the hard face of costs and enter the World crises “atmosphere” [4]: “Historians will probably spend decades picking apart the consequences of the COVID-19 epidemic. But the shortage of chips that it's caused will be long over by then. A variety of analysts agree that the most problematic shortages will begin to ease in the third or fourth quarter of 2021, though it could take much of 2022 for the resulting chips to work their way through the supply chain to products. The supply relief will not be coming from the big, national investments in the works right now by South Korea, the United States, and Europe but from older chip fabs and foundries running processes far from the cutting edge and on comparatively small silicon wafers.” Always we have to find first the causes/premises which led to a crisis/problem, in order to have chances to optimally solve it, as it is further presented: “Before we get into how the shortage will end, it's worth summing up how it began. With panic, lockdowns, and general uncertainty rolling across the globe, automakers cancelled orders. However, those conditions meant a big fraction of the workforce recreated the office at home, purchasing computers, monitors, and other equipment. At the same time entire school systems switched to virtual learning via laptops and tablets. And more time at home also meant more spending on home entertainment, such as TVs and game consoles. These, the 5G rollout,

and continued growth in cloud computing quickly hoovered up the capacity automakers had unceremoniously freed. By the time car makers realized people still wanted to buy their goods they found themselves at the back of the line for the chips they needed.” Considering the huge industry around ICT and beyond, it is naturally to keep (and spread) the optimism, especially for this global chip shortage: “The chip shortage is happening simultaneously with national and regional efforts to boost advanced logic chip manufacturing. South Korea announced a push worth $450-billion over ten years, the United States is pushing legislation worth $52 billion, and the EU could plow up to $160-billion into its semiconductor sector. Chipmakers were already on a spending spree. Globally, capital equipment for semiconductor production grew 56 percent year-onyear through April 2021, according to SEMI. SEMI's 3 June 2021 World Fab Forecast indicates that 10 new 300-mm fabs will start operation in 2021 with 14 more coming up in 2022.” Still, we consider that it is mandatory to maintain a rigorous vigilance about such systemic and overwhelming risk/crises (like chip shortage), especially before having confidence that we have got over them and most of all, that we have learned all the lessons to prevent/manage them for future. 2. Learning from the actual ICT resources and challenges for driving a sustainable advance Although the Earth civilization history could be seen as long, considering human life and the incredible progress we made, at Universe scale it is only a short scenario that our recent history appears to make it shorter. Here we have to observe that ICT exponential speed of development, leading to a similar IS/KBS pace evolution, sometimes could “add” to the mentioned premises toward a shorter scenario, but now, more than before, it is important to learn from history, including ICT recent evolution, in order to make the scenario longer, in a sustainable manner. Our opinion is that, when analysing ICT development actual resources and challenges, we should follow step by step a multi-fold goal for our future World: - Providing support for the urgent/emergent research/production/actions to mitigate the World crises, like alternative energy resources, new and recycled materials etc.; - Searching solutions to approximately continue Moore Law and similar resources of ICT; - Identifying challenges that determine reconfiguration of performance and areas of priorities for ICT advances; - Export ideas, models, algorithms and conclusions from ICT experience of development, in dramatical context premises, to other human activity domains; - Search principles and models of optimizating the AI-HI combination in order to leverage knowledge refining for a sustainable World progress. It is sure that, even step by step and long time, such generous and consistent results will not be easy to achieve, but it is essential to agree that they could have a huge importance in terms of opportunity and impact, for the present and future of our Earth ecosystem. Now it is natural to shortly analyse some relevant examples of ICT actual resources and challenges, which would be lessons to consider, for future sustainable development, even

beyond the sphere of ICT, due to the ICT impact over the entire IS/KBS, leading this way to the benefic multi-disciplinary results/innovations. Here it is important to notice that beyond the sphere of ICT could mean not only all the linked industries, as ICT impact covers almost all domains of human activity. More than these, the actual and emerging dramatical context, and especially the material crises, will expect research and solutions in many industries, like chemistry, food and of course energy, including everywhere ICT will certainly come with support and added value. Although it could appear as a narrow field of applications, the use of AI and deep learning for a spectacular advance of microscopy could push toward many research areas and even industries (among other, biotechnology, medicine, chemistry and food), just in the abovementioned struggle to find new material resources or useful features, starting from innovations at the nanoscale domain [1]: “It’s difficult to find an area of scientific research where deep learning isn’t discussed as the next big thing. Claims abound: Deep learning will spot cancers; it will unravel complex protein structures; it will reveal new exoplanets in previously analysed data; it will even discover a theory of everything. Knowing what’s real and what’s just hype isn’t always easy. One promising—perhaps even overlooked—area of research for deep learning to make its mark is in microscopy. In spite of new discoveries, the underlying workflow of techniques like scanning probe microscopy (SPM) and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) has remained largely unchanged for decades. Skilled human operators must painstakingly set up, observe, and analyze samples. Deep learning has the potential not only to automate many of the tedious tasks, but also to dramatically speed up the analysis time by honing in on microscopic features of interest.” Without entering details, it is important to imagine that the struggle for urgently finding new materials and useful features could have a benefic support from this AI assisted technology, in the complex processes of identifying the desired combinations when revealing and recording all data that match (even approximately) the research goals, with a higher speed and accuracy: << “People usually just look at the image and identify a few properties of interest,” says Maxim Ziatdinov, a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “They basically discard most of the information because there is just no way to actually extract all the features of interest from the data.” With deep learning, Ziatdinov says, it’s possible to extract information about the position and type of atomic structures in seconds, opening up a vista of possibilities. It’s a twist on the classical dream of doing more with smaller things (most famously expressed in Richard Feynman’s “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”). Improving hardware isn’t the only way to increase the functionality of microscopes. Software can play a role, too—by making a microscope autonomous. “Such a machine will ‘understand’ what it is looking at and automatically document features of interest,” an article in the Materials Research Society Bulletin declared. “The microscope will know what various features look like by referencing databases or can be shown examples on the fly.”>> This more intimate and agile technology has the potential to discover and point, at nanoscale, i.e., to the extreme of the science horizon, both new structures/features of materials and the defects too, as it is further presented:

<<Despite the “micro-” prefix, microscopy such as SPM and STEM actually deals with objects on the nanoscale, including individual atoms. In SPM, a nanoscale tip hovers over the sample surface and traces its grooves, like the needle of a record player, to create an image. On the other hand, STEM generates an image by showering a sample with electrons and collecting those that pass through, essentially creating a negative. Both microscopy echniques allow researchers to quickly observe the broad structural features of a sample. Researchers like Ziatdinov are interested in the functional properties of certain features such as defects.>> Another example, reflecting the actual context where of ICT resources and challenges are confronting, when searching solutions for a future sustainable progress, is in the crucial field of processors (CPU) development, which is also very relevant when facing the energy crisis [2]: “According to one recent estimate, data centers consume 2 percent of the world’s electricity, a figure that’s expected to climb to 8 percent by 2030. To turn back the age of the grid-greedy CPU, a group of researchers in Japan has developed a superconducting microprocessor-one with zero electrical resistance. The new device, the first of its kind, is described in a study published in December in the IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits. The research group sought to create a superconducting microprocessor that’s adiabatic—meaning that, in principle, energy is neither gained nor lost from the system during the computing process. The device is composed of superconducting niobium and relies on hardware components called adiabatic quantum-flux-parametrons (AQFPs).” Here we can observe an accumulation of many factors, including both ICT new resources and challenges issues, as 2 (or soon 8) percent of the world’s electricity is not only huge, but it is really a signal of alarm (especially considering the emergent energy crises) about the consequences of ICT exponential development at planetary scale, we also repeatedly presented [14][3][15], revealing in the same time the necessity of a radical change, i.e., a new paradigm of advancing ICT/CPU, which is further confirmed by spectacular increase of new technology efficiency: << “The data-processing part of the microprocessor can operate up to a clock frequency of 2.5 gigahertz, making this on par with today’s computing technologies,” says Christopher L. Ayala, an associate professor at the Institute of Advanced Sciences at Yokohama National University, in Japan, who helped develop the new microprocessor. “Even when taking [the] cooling overhead into account,” Ayala says, “the AQFP is still about 80 times more energy efficient when compared to the state-of-the-art semiconductor electronic device, [such as the] 7-nanometer FinFET [fin field-effect transistor], available today.” >> It is sure that a long road is still ahead a large use of this technology and this is also true if we recall the fact that the superconducting idea, generally, is not very new. In fact, we just met, as a relevant case, a point of strategic importance, we above have mentioned, when urgent and consistent solutions are desperately expected and needed from ICT advances for humankind and Earth sustainable future. It is important to notice that the future ICT expected solutions, along with other actions generally intended for the World urgent crises, should not be necessary only in the direction of intensively advance in the areas already started for improvements of the performances in the associated domains, but (and sometimes, on the contrary) in the new directions, i.e., changing

the paradigm or the way of thinking, or simply changing the humankind/society behaviours that are not sustainable, as the next example, also in the huge industry of CPU, presents[8]: “As society’s insatiable demand for computing power continues to grow, so too does the need for more efficient processors. A group of researchers in Switzerland has devised a new processor design that may help. It is physically small and computationally agile—and aptly named Snitch. (Harry Potter fans will get the reference.) Florian Zaruba, a postdoc at the Integrated Systems Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), in Zurich-and a researcher involved in the creation of Snitch-notes that commercial, generalpurpose cores today rely on larger and more energy-hungry processors. “Snitch is the opposite,” he says. Typically, processors try to find an efficient instruction order on the fly, which requires additional hardware and thus uses more power. But Snitch is able to execute the majority of its basic instructions instantaneously, bypassing the need for this extra, burdensome hardware.” The innovations of this new model of CPU seems to provide a substantial gain in the desired energy efficiency, but it comes also with an impressing increase of speed, as it is further pointed: “Zaruba and his colleagues describe their streamlined, RISC-V chip design in a study published 7 October in IEEE Transactions on Computers. They found that a single Snitch processor with its custom extensions was twice as energy efficient as comparable benchmark CPUs. When multiple processors were used in parallel, Snitch proved to be 3.5 times as energy efficient and up to six times as fast as the others. The researchers have open-sourced Snitch’s hardware design and note that they have seen growing interest from industry consortia, for example from the Open Hardware Group, in supporting commercialization efforts.” Our opinion is that, in this area of ICT/CPU improvements, any relevant research/result is more than expected/benefic, but it is also true that each case must be analysed in the larger context of associated applications. In this case, we believe that the relevance/importance of results is given by the fact that generally we do not need state-of-the-art performance in all applications and consequently we could have a great sustainable progress if there is a diversity of applications, counting huge cost savings at planetary scale. More than these, we think that, from this example, the idea of better matching performances with applications levels and cost is a very relevant criteria for ICT (and other industries too) sustainable development, in order to face the energy and materials crises to come. For a concrete argument of our last opinion, it is more than relevant to consider the huge area of IoT applications, where the diversity and the number of applications at Earth scale will be so high [14][18][10][6], that the mentioned matching is the main criteria of development and optimization and could provide just the expected savings. As we have referred just to the first step of the multi-goal approach we have proposed (support for the urgent/emergent research/production/actions to mitigate the World crises), a further analysis is needed and naturally to be continued, without considering that it would be exhaustive, but keep thinking that the huge context of ICT sustainable development is crucial for mitigating the consequences of emergent World dramatical changes/crises.

3. Conclusions Along with the complex and still dramatic trends of the global processes which we really can see in the Earth ecosystem, affecting a diversity of domains (which have the potential to be extended almost randomly, because of the accumulated negative premises of the World context), we have to consider also the benefic ways ICT is already influencing the humankind and our planet, with the expectation that this influence will be continued under the new conditions. It is very important to analyse such premises of the complex World context, in order to identify the optimal or at least the sustainable ways ICT could be further developed in order to support the approaching and facing of the most probable and dramatical changes/processes/events which would have the potential to strongly affect the life quality on Earth and even the whole planetary ecosystem. We consider this actual stage a sort of apogee and see, today, the level of its dramatism as a humankind race for a balance between apogee and survival, because in a such picture/expression, it is no doubt, we could observe the extreme high position our civilization is in, by the huge difference created in years of incredible progress and the inacceptable perspective of losing the survival race. Although sometimes it is considered that the accumulated negative premises are not critical, yet, for example in the climate changes case (when the opinion is already more than dubitable), as prominent challenge for the Earth and humankind, another significant difference versus the past is the Earth resources fading critical stage (including food), which already began to generate cascades of dramatical consequences in more and more domains, from energy to social and geopolitical crises. As a consequence of such negative context premises for the Earth ecosystem evolution, it is necessary to analyse all the possibilities of humankind to mitigate these trends/challenges, including first the well-known potential of ICT to influence the World and support IS/KBS. The essence, the opportunity and the urgency of such analyses could be expressed by a simplified example, considering that, in a large desert land/context, any person should think twice before consuming the last reserves of food and water. The expected challenges, dilemmas and dramatical changes/crises, we will have to face more and more, must be approached by rational and complicate analyses, in spite of the extreme uncertainty levels these problems could have, leveraging our success chances if using for such purposes all the acquired and potential power of ICT advances, including AI along with HI and wisdom. Among the priorities of the rational mentioned analyses, we must consider, with priority, the necessity of the research for new alternative energy and materials (including food) solutions, along with recycling and saving the actual but fading Earth resources. This crucial challenge will determine the ways the World progress, based on production and consummation, could be continued in a sustainable manner, a longer or a shorter period of time, i.e., it will define the mentioned balance between apogee and survival, on Earth. Such general, necessary and benefic goal could be approached only by successive and concrete steps, keeping in mind, as much as possible, all global and specific criteria that should be largely identified and agreed at planetary scale, although this condition is perhaps the most difficult of all, as the World history just proved again and again that humankind just tried to delay to recognize and ultimately act as the worst scenarios appear more and more

probable. Another significant issue, making the difference over the past, is given by the extreme urgency and last mile stage World is in, before being too late! Planning the long road of the mentioned concrete steps, we think that the systemic and structural approaches should be based on some value/relevant principles, criteria and examples, as our paper shortly presents. One of the ideas that we already approached is to consider the practical importance of the general context of ICT development, due to the crucial role of ICT in IS toward KBS and to the necessity to agree that refining knowledge is essential in the mentioned stage World is in. As a principle consequence of considering ICT influence at planetary scale, i.e., a real leverage factor for all human activity domains, being also a huge consumer of energy and materials, is to carefully analyse both positive and eventual negative issues of ICT exponential evolution, but pointing just the necessity to adapt the ICT future pace and systemic structure to the dramatical context premises, understanding that although some development areas/directions should be slowed down, other could be faster. This way, the analysis of ICT advances issues, where AI, among others, is prominent, remains the starting point, as the power of all ICT products, services or applications, considering, still, the refined knowledge which could reconfigure the weights of different areas of applications, must be the basic potential of computing and networking power to be provided where World priority goals will arise. Following such goals, but not being limited to them, our analysis is based on relevant cases/examples, as a support for their eventual integration in useful studies or advices for incumbents, or reference for everyone - an education component, necessary to face the emerging dramatical/dynamic World. We consider that the education should be the main mass way to refine the knowledge for the appropriate actions everyone has to understand, in the dynamic mentioned World and ICT context, but it is also clear that we could not expect the fast appearance of necessary refined knowledge, nor the consequent actions, just knowing the humankind history. Identifying the “refined knowledge” and the “necessity” will rise more and more complex, complicate and difficult problems, but here comes the expected power of ICT and AI, which has the potential to bring the data from all areas, to extract the relevant information and then to imply humans in all associated processes of creation/innovation, education, debating and eventually decision, providing the appropriate approach and speed for each category, case and stage. Observing some sophisticated examples of actual AI applications, one could say that such scenarios are already largely analysed and the industry is working to develop ICT/AI in this direction, so we could say that it is just a face of the normality we already expect and build, as we pointed at our paper beginning. The reality of this evolution is still more challenging, as for providing only the necessary data, ICT impact on IS/KBS is huge and must be optimized because of the hidden costs. Under the hidden costs, we have to include more than energy and material resources, but also innovation and management necessary to integrate relevant data at Earth scale based on refined knowledge models, i.e., a lot of studies, models, methods and AI/HI. Starting from a normality example, the accumulated negative consequences (from costs and challenges and risks) could be considerable on medium and long term. The relevance of such examples is much beyond the application domain and context, as we propose to extract from it the huge potential of ICT/AI/HI to extrapolate such kind of applications to a higher level of IS/KBS, in order to optimize other, more complex processes,

at Earth scale, based on their mentioned power and advances, but using the appropriate refined knowledge each time. Still, we have to use all the chances and human resources to continue a sustainable development of our ecosystem, including the power of ICT/AI necessary advances we just mentioned above. We consider that, when speaking about the sustainable development of our ecosystem, each time we have to see first the premises of the actual/normal development which are less sustainable or to carefully analyse the challenges which lead to such difficult evolutions. On the other hand, it is necessary to analyse such premises/challenges and eventually address the appropriate, even preliminary, solutions to mitigate them. Analysing examples in general domains of data, as the paper also did, step by step such analyses will lead us to the core of the problems/solutions, from ICT resources to refining knowledge, revealing challenges about the data, models and costs, implying the necessary storage and energy. One of the analysed examples (chip shortage) just showed the emergence and realism of such approach, along with useful conclusions, as always we have to find first the causes/premises which led to a crisis/problem, in order to have chances to optimally solve it. Considering the huge industry around ICT and beyond, it is naturally to keep (and spread) the optimism, especially for this global chip shortage, but we consider that it is mandatory to maintain a rigorous vigilance about such systemic and overwhelming risk/crises (like chip shortage), especially before having confidence that we have got over them and most of all, that we have learned all the lessons to prevent/manage them for future. Observing that the Earth civilization history could be seen as long, considering human life and the incredible progress we made, at Universe scale it is only a short scenario that our recent history appears to make it shorter. We have to point that ICT exponential speed of development, leading to a similar IS/KBS pace evolution, sometimes could “add” to the mentioned premises toward a shorter scenario, but now, more than before, it is important to learn from history, including ICT recent evolution, in order to make the scenario longer, in a sustainable manner. Although it is only a general, but realistic and practical approach, in a complex context full of uncertainty, our opinion/proposal is that, when analysing ICT development actual resources and challenges, we should follow step by step a multi-fold goal for our future World: - Providing support for the urgent/emergent research/production/actions to mitigate the World crises, like alternative energy resources, new and recycled materials etc.; - Searching solutions to approximately continue Moore Law and similar resources of ICT; - Identifying challenges that determine reconfiguration of performance and areas of priorities for ICT advances; - Export ideas, models, algorithms and conclusions from ICT experience of development, in dramatical context premises, to other human activity domains; - Search principles and models of optimizating the AI-HI combination in order to leverage knowledge refining for a sustainable World progress. Even step by step and long time, such generous and consistent results will not be easy to achieve, but it is essential to agree that they could have a huge importance in terms of opportunity and impact, for the present and future of our Earth ecosystem.

We also shortly analysed some relevant examples of ICT actual resources and challenges, which would be lessons to consider, for future sustainable development, even beyond the sphere of ICT, due to the ICT impact over the entire IS/KBS, leading this way to the benefic multi-disciplinary results/innovations. Beyond the sphere of ICT could mean not only all the linked industries, as ICT impact covers almost all domains of human activity. More than these, the actual and emerging dramatical context, and especially the material crises, will expect research and solutions in many industries, like chemistry, food and of course energy, including everywhere ICT will certainly come with support and added value. Among the above examples, the spectacular advance of microscopy could push toward many research areas and even industries (among other, biotechnology, medicine, chemistry and food), just in the above-mentioned struggle to find new material resources or useful features, starting from innovations at the nanoscale domain. The struggle for urgently finding new materials and useful features could have a benefic support from this AI assisted technology, in the complex processes of identifying the desired combinations when revealing and recording all data that match (even approximately) the research goals, with a higher speed and accuracy. This more intimate and agile technology has the potential to discover and point, at nanoscale, i.e., to the extreme of the science horizon, both new structures/features of materials and the defects too. Reflecting the actual context where of ICT resources and challenges are confronting, when searching solutions for a future sustainable progress, the example of the crucial field of processors development (a superconducting CPU from Japan), which is also very relevant when facing the energy crisis, was above analysed. Here we observed an accumulation of many factors, including both ICT new resources and challenges issues, as 2 (or soon 8) percent of the world’s electricity is consumed by World data centers, which is not only huge, but it is really a signal of alarm (especially considering the emergent energy crises) about the consequences of ICT exponential development at planetary scale, we also repeatedly presented [14][3][15], revealing in the same time the necessity of a radical change, i.e., a new paradigm of advancing ICT/CPU. It is sure that a long road is still ahead a large use of this technology and this is also true if we recall the fact that the superconducting idea, generally, is not very new. In fact, we just met, as a relevant case, a point of strategic importance, we above have mentioned, when urgent and consistent solutions are desperately expected and needed from ICT advances for humankind and Earth sustainable future. An important conclusion is that the future ICT expected solutions, along with other actions generally intended for the World urgent crises, should not be necessary only in the direction of intensively advance in the areas already started for improvements of the performances in the associated domains, but (and sometimes, on the contrary) in the new directions, i.e., changing the paradigm or the way of thinking, or simply changing the humankind/society behaviours that are not sustainable. These ideas are also confirmed, in the huge industry of CPU innovations, by another example of new model of CPU (from Switzerland), above presented, which seems to provide a substantial gain in the desired energy efficiency, but it comes also with an impressing increase of speed. Our opinion is that, in this area of ICT/CPU improvements, any relevant research/result is more than expected/benefic, but it is also true that each case must be analysed in the larger context of associated applications. In this case, we believe that the relevance/importance of results is given by the fact that

generally we do not need state-of-the-art performance in all applications and consequently we could have a great sustainable progress if there is a diversity of applications, counting huge cost savings at planetary scale. More than these, we think that, from this example, the idea of better matching performances with applications levels and cost is a very relevant criteria for ICT (and other industries too) sustainable development, in order to face the energy and materials crises to come. Such opinion is also based on the huge area of IoT, where the diversity and the number of applications at Earth scale will be so high [14][18][10][6], as the mentioned matching is the main criteria of development and optimization and could provide just the expected savings. After referring only to the first step of the multi-goal approach we have proposed (support for the urgent/emergent research/production/actions to mitigate the World crises), a further analysis is needed and naturally to be continued, without considering that it would be exhaustive, but keep thinking that the huge context of ICT sustainable development is crucial for mitigating the consequences of emergent World dramatical changes/crises. REFERENCES [1] Dan Garisto, Navigating the Nanoscale-Deep learning enables push toward self-driving microscopes, IEEE Spectrum, Volume: 59, Issue: 1, Jan 2022 [2] Michelle Hampson, Superconducting CPUs, IEEE Spectrum, Volume: 58, Issue: 3 Mar 2021 [3] Victor Greu, Searching the right tracks of new technologies in the earth race for a balance between progress and survival, Romanian Distribution Committee (affiliated to the “International Association of the Distributive Trade”-scientific association – A.I.D.A. Brussels) Magazine(international; electronic; covered in RePEc International Data Base), Volume 3, Issue1, Year 2012. [4] Samuel K. Moore, How and When the Chip Shortage Will End, IEEE Spectrum, Volume: 58, Issue: 6, Jun 2021 [5] Srividya K. Bansal, Sebastian Kagemann, Semantic Extract-Transform-Load framework for Big Data Integration, Computer, Volume: 48, Issue: 3, Mar. 2015 [6] Florin Enache, Victor Greu, Petrică Ciotîrnae, Florin Popescu, Model and Algorithms for Optimizing a Human Computing System Oriented to Knowledge Extraction by Use of Crowdsourcing, 2020, 13th International Conference on Communications (COMM), (Politehnica University of Bucharest, Military Technical Academy, IEEE Romania), (COMM 2020 is covered in IEEE Explore Database and ISI Web of Science in the Conference Proceedings Citation Index) [7] Vaclav Smil, Numbers don’t lie_by data world: racing toward yotta, IEEE Spectrum, Volume: 56, Issue: 7, Jul 2019 [8] Michelle Hampson, This RISC-V Powerhouse Goes Light on the Power, Volume: 59, Issue: 1 Jan 2022 [9] Victor Greu et all, Human and artificial intelligence driven incentive-operation model and algorithms for a multi-purpose integrated crowdsensing-crowdsourcing scalable system, Proceedings of International Conference Communications 2018, (Politehnica University of Bucharest, Military Technical Academy, IEEE Romania), June 2018(COMM 2018 is covered in IEEE Explore Database and ISI Web of Science in the Conference Proceedings Citation Index).

[10] ***, Intel Scales Neuromorphic Research System to 100 Million Neurons, IEEE Spectrum, March 18, 2020, https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-scales-neuromorphic-researchsystem-100-million-neurons/#gs.8os7kd [11]John Russell, Quantum Bits: Intel Turns up the Heat; NSF, IBM, AWS, M’soft Collaborate; Q-CTRL Takes in Cash, April 15, 2020, https://www.hpcwire.com/2020/04/15/ quantum-bitsintel-turns-up-the-heat-nsf-ibm-aws-msoft-collaborate-q-ctrl-takes-in-cash/ [12] Victor Greu, The Exponential Development of the Information and Communications Technologies – A Complex Process Which is Generating Progress Knowledge from People to People, Romanian Distribution Committee (affiliated to the “International Association of the Distributive Trade”-scientific association – A.I.D.A. Brussels) Magazine(international; electronic; covered in RePEc International Data Base), Volume 4, Issue2, Year 2013. [13] Samuel K. Moore, What Intel Is Planning for The Future of Quantum Computing: Hot Qubits, Cold Control Chips, and Rapid Testing, IEEE Spectrum, Volume: 57, Issue: 8, Aug 2020 [14] Victor Greu, Information and communications technologies go greener beyond IOTbehind is all the earth-Part1, Romanian Distribution Committee (affiliated to the “International Association of the Distributive Trade”-scientific association – A.I.D.A. Brussels) Magazine(international; electronic; covered in RePEc International Data Base), Volume 7, Issue 2, Year 2016. [15]Raj Kumar Hansdah, Scientific Progress Without True Wisdom Will Cause More Harm Than Good, https://www.beaninspirer.com/scientific-progress-without-true-wisdom-willcause-more-harm-than-good, Updated: October 21, 2021 [16] Victor Greu, Information and communications technology is merging data science and advanced artificial intelligence towards the core of knowledge based society -(Part 3), Romanian Distribution Committee (affiliated to the “International Association of the Distributive Trade”-scientific association – A.I.D.A. Brussels) Magazine(international; electronic; covered in RePEc International Data Base), Volume 12, Issue 3, Year 2021. [17] Victor GREU, Information and Communications Technologies are Learning from Nature’s “Research” to Push the Performance Limits, Romanian Distribution Committee (affiliated to the “International Association of the Distributive Trade”-scientific association – A.I.D.A. Brussels) Magazine(international; electronic; covered in RePEc International Data Base), Volume 5, Issue 1, Year 2014. [18] Victor Greu, Communicate on … Communications - From a Conference every 2 years to the need to communicate everyday and everywhere, Romanian Distribution Committee (affiliated to the “International Association of the Distributive Trade”-scientific association – A.I.D.A. Brussels) Magazine (international; electronic; covered in RePEc International Data Base), Volume 5, Issue 2, Year 2014.

THIS INFLATION IS "DIFFERENT"

Prof. PhD Maria NEGREPONTI-DELIVANIS

Abstract Certain peculiar features of inflation, which has reappeared after some forty years of absence, raise questions as to whether it is the classic, that is, the one we have known for years. In particular, the current inflation does not seem to confirm its basic definition, which is based on the existence of a positive relationship between the quantity of money and the general price level. Keywords: Inflation, Permanent Stagnation, New Monetary Theory, Reasonable Predictions JEL Classification: B50, E10, E31 There is no relationship between the quantity of money and the price level For nearly four decades, not only inflation but also the panic that surrounded it in the past had virtually disappeared from the advanced economies of the West. Modern governments of recent years have been trying in vain to achieve a minimum level of increase in the general price level of 2%, necessary to revive the economies. And in the EU in particular, the strict monetary balance conditions of the Stability Pact, introduced to protect the euro from inflation, but not from stagnation, which was not foreseen, were now being treated as a 'bargaining chip'. The break in the traditional relationships between money and prices and between money and unemployment occurred during the period of globalization and, above all, before the start of its retreat. This rupture was recognized as the dominant symptom of the stagnation of the Western economies and

the emergence, in several of them, of the extreme unorthodox phenomenon of negative interest rates. The search for explanations for these unfavorable developments has brought to the fore the old Alvin Hansen theory of the stage of perpetual stagnation of mature economies, which the Western economies are now experiencing. According to the famous American economist of the last century, when economies enter the stage of maturity and decline, they are unable to continue their positive development and enter a state of permanent stagnation. The need to address the considerable reconstruction needs of economies after the Second World War seemed to disprove Alvin Hansen's theory, but it is already re-emerging with a vengeance. This economic theory, moreover, is complemented by Oswald Spengler's theory of the succession of civilizations, which predicts the end of Western civilization and its assignment to a successor. The East, and more specifically Chinese civilization, is already imposed as the successor. Of the multitude of reasons that have caused the deactivation of the money-price relationship in modern economies, and the West's entry into a stage of economic stagnation, I will choose here what I consider to be the dominant one, in my analyses of recent years, but which several economists are already focusing on. It is the dramatic consequences of globalization, which have dealt a severe blow to neoliberal capitalism and which have led it to break its promise of 'prosperity for all'. The reasons for this failure are due to the reversal of the conditions of general equilibrium resulting from the unprecedented inequality in the distribution of wealth at all levels. An everlarger share of GDP, which used to belong to labor (according to the laws of the Cobb-Douglas functional distribution), has since 2000 been retained by capital (expropriated by shareholders). This rising and extremely dangerous imbalance is due to the reduction of progressive taxation, tax havens, the rise of monopoly situations, the tendency to equalize wages between developing and advanced economies, the decline of trade unionism, the shrinking of the public sector, the assignment of the fate of economies to the invisible hand, etc. This culminating inequality has led to a dramatic fall in demand for consumption, but of course also for investment, to a reduction in the rate of growth, to an increase in public and private debt (in order to prevent consumption from completely collapsing), to the derailment of monetary theory and to the emergence of a 'newer monetary theory', which allows and justifies almost everything. In the new conditions prevailing in the Western economies, there is plenty of liquidity, but it is not channeled into economic activity, but into stock markets, speculation and hoarding. And this explains the negative interest rates, the inability, until recently, to achieve inflation of 2% in spite of monetary easing in the EU, the swelling of bank deposits, even in bankrupt economies such as Greece, but it also explains the fact that the trillions spent on for pandemic needs in the US and EU had no impact on the general price level, initially and up to a certain point. However, the event beyond that point, namely the emergence of inflation, does not seem to be related to "helicopter money", or to the monetization of public debt (central bank bond purchases), even though the monetary base amounts to over $15 trillion. We can therefore conclude that the sudden rise in prices, already reaching 6.2% in Greece, and a little bit less in the EU, is not directly related to the additional amount of money put into circulation to deal with the pandemic, nor will it be related to the millions that are expected to flow into Europe

through the Recovery Fund. Furthermore, the re-emergence of inflation has nothing to do with the volume of unemployment, which also seems to be no longer affected by the amount of money. Therefore, it is not traditional inflation. But it is not stagflation either, since in this case, although there is a relationship between money and prices, the economy is not able to increase its GDP or reduce unemployment. Finally, and it is important to note, this type of inflation is not dealt with by raising interest rates, as the Federal Reserve and perhaps the ECB seem to hope. In order to restore the traditional relationship between the quantity of money and the general level of prices, as well as the possibility of money having an effect on the volume of unemployment, it is necessary that a wide-ranging redistribution of income should have taken place beforehand in order to restore the broken equilibrium between the shares of labor and capital in GDP. For it is precisely this imbalance that is responsible for the inactivation of the relationship between money and prices. The causes of the present inflation? In so far as the present analysis of the data corresponds to reality, the rise in prices is due to causes which, even if the money supply were reduced and interest rates increased, would not affect their level. These causes, a significant proportion of them, are attributable to factors directly or indirectly related to the pandemic, among others: * The disruption of the production chain in many parts of the world, * The shortage of spare parts, as many of their producers wrongly decided to reduce production at the beginning of the crisis, * China’s decision to increase its production at home in order to reduce its dependence on foreign countries, * The shortage of labor, mainly in low-paid and insecure jobs, as the pandemic has resulted, among other things, in a realization of the need to seek better working conditions, * The inability of ships to cope with the sudden increase in demand for their services, * The concentration of demand on scarce goods and less on services, and of course, * The sharp rise in energy prices. In the realm of reasonable predictions, the hypothesis that the return to normality after the pandemic is over (if and when it occurs) will gradually reduce price pressures. This hypothesis applies to all of the above causes that push prices upwards, except for energy. For, especially in its case, several facts encourage fears that normality will take a long time to be restored or even that developments in this respect are likely to hold surprises. First of all, let me recall that the high energy prices are due in large part to the fact that the West, and Europe in particular, was in a hurry to switch to green energy before it had gone far enough in making the necessary investments to replace traditional energy. It is predicted that green energy will take a long time (5 years is predicted) and very expensive investments to complete. But beyond these difficulties, energy developments are shrouded in a thick veil of doubt and uncertainty, as they depend not only on the

laws of supply and demand, but also on geopolitical aspirations and complex, if conflicting, interests in the international arena. Thessaloniki, 05.03.2022 References * America’s inflation spike begins, The Economist, 17.4.2021 * Artus Patrik and Marie-Paule Virard (2021), La dernière chance du capitalisme, Odile Jacob * Boesler, Matthew and Emily Graffeo, “Why Stagflation Is back on Some Traders’ Radars”, Bloomberg,14.102021 * “Bring out the vim-o-meter”, The Economist, 18.09.2021 * “Depending on where you look, the recovery is either on track or in trouble”, The Economist, 24.07.2021 * Hansen, Alvin (1939), “Economic Progress and Declining Population”, The American Economic Journal, March 1939, Vol. XXIX, No 1, Part I * Martin, Aude, « Les pénuries réveillent la peur de l’inflation », Alternatives Economiques, No 415, sept. 20.09.2021 * Gelles, David, A warning raised on shift to cleaner energy, International New York Times,67.11.2021 * Inflation jump care, The Economist, 15.05.2021 * “Is the world economy entering a wage-price spiral?” The Economist, 16.102021 * Manivela, Dimitra, “Inflation eats into savings”, International New York Times,30-31.10.2021 * Martin, Aude, « Les pénuries réveillent la peur de l’inflation », Alternatives Economiques, No 415, sept. * Roubini, Nouriel, “Why stagflation is a growing threat to the global economy”, 15.04.2021, The Guardian (BST) * Reading, Brian, “Return of cost-push inflation may lead to stagflation”, OMFIF, 10.10.2021 * Schwartz, D. Nelson, “Fear of inflation finds foothold in bond market”, International New York Times, 31.03.2021 * Sommer, Jeff, “A spike in inflation ahead? No one really knows”, International New York Times, 3-4. 07.2021 * “Stagflation sensation”, The Economist, 09.10.2021 * “When does transitory inflation become sustained? Some lessons from the 1970”, The Economist, 29.05.2021 * “How strong is the case that inflation is about to return”, The Economist, 12.12.2020

The application of neuromarketing in retailing and visual merchandising

by Cosmin TĂNASE Abstract The impact of brands, products, advertisements and merchandising tools used as a part of in-store communication act together at the point of sale during shopping. The subject of marketers’ and researchers’ interest is the measurement of the final purchasing interest and observation of consumer behaviour at the point of sale – what, where, when, why and for how much are consumers buying. However, there are a high number of measurable variables, such as perceived simplicity of finding out the products, overall impression of the shop and likelihood of return, consumer behaviour is the final subject of interest. This simple fact widely influences the possibilities of the most effective application of neuromarketing methods used for the measurement of shopping experiences. Keywords: neuroscience, retail, merchandising, communication, behavioural studies, purchasing environment, interactive virtual reality, neuromarketing JEL Classification: L81, L86, M31, Q55

Predicting consumer behaviour has always been a major interest of marketing experts. Traditional marketing researches are still effective and shall be used in marketing. However, there are situations when it is necessary to complement conventional methods by modern ones. Marketing experts say that marketers shall no longer be guided by what the respondents declare about themselves in surveys, because their brain – the part that does not pretend anything – often contradicts it. Neuromarketing basically refers to the measurement of physiological and neural signals to gain insight into customers' motivations, preferences, and decisions, which can help inform creative advertising, product development, pricing, and other marketing areas. Visual merchandising is nowadays used and applied everywhere, from stores, public institutions, whole HORECA segment as well as in events. In retail and business services, the contact between provider and customer directly at the point of sale presents the most direct process of marketing, and time and money spending depend on atmosphere which is around the customer and influence his/her senses. The aim of visual merchandising is to capture consumer’s attention. That means everything that customer can see, smell, touch, hear, exterior or interior, creates a positive or negative impact on a guest. Retailers or service providers are gradually realizing that only selling the product or services matters, but customers’ satisfaction and convenience is too important for shopping. Visual merchandising is therefore concerned with both, how the product or service and their brands are visually communicated to the customer and whether this message is aptly decoded. The consumer perception is based on visual contact too; one picture can replace thousand words. Visual food merchandising is one of the hottest trends in the restaurant, foodservice and hospitality industry today, it is the modern art of presenting products in a way, that gets the guests to buy as well as bringing services to life with eye-catching displays of freshness, colour, quality, design, first impression or abundance. Consumer psychology and neuroscience provide more detailed research on consumer behaviour and decision-making process at the point of sale. Modern neurosciences brought the tools providing an insight into human brains and thus opening a way to psychological process of decision-making – to the black box of brain. Recently, there is a strong interest in the concept of application of the neuroscience methods used for the research of consumer emotions and cognitive reactions. In fact, the use of psycho- physiological techniques in consumer research is nothing new. It is necessary to pay attention to human behaviour while implementing the marketing, because shopping represents a comprehensive experience for human mind. New revolutionary techniques provide unimaginable potential for performance of marketing and neuromarketing techniques. Retail marketing is changing very quickly and many retailers are trying to use innovative ideas to help them to be different from their competitors. Using sophisticated neuro-research, companies can uncover what influences their customers and what processes precede consumer’s decision. Based on its results, companies choose an optimal marketing strategy directly at the point of sale. In this context, retailers can use merchandising and communication tools to attract customers’ attention – POP and POS materials. Providing comprehensive enjoyment from shopping that includes finding, choice and payment can only be done if it in line with conscious and subconscious goals of the consumer. Neuroscience research provides relevant answers to the questions in the field of visual merchandising and communication at the point of sale:

▶ attractiveness of the shop’s exterior (storefronts, entries, banners); ▶ attractiveness of the shop’s interior (design, atmosphere, illumination); ▶ attractiveness of merchandising and its tools (displaying, organization of goods, POP and POS materials); ▶ consumer behaviour and decision-making process at the point of sale (immediate vs planned purchases). Neuromarketing research in the field of visual merchandising can be carried out in simulated or real purchasing conditions. This is related to the frequent use of mobile research technologies. Brain activity is mostly displayed by EEG, which is usually supplemented with biometric measurements such as EOG (measure with eye camera – eye tracker) and measurement of cardiac and respiratory activity. Under the application of neuro-displaying and biometric methods into practical research activities is understood their use in the research of selected situations in consumer behaviour. They provide information to be used for deeper understanding of consumer behaviour and decision-making. Nowadays, behavioural studies can be searched either in natural purchasing environment or simulated one. Behavioural studies in natural purchasing environment Observation of the mental state of buyers in natural environment falls into a range of challenges that are growing in proportion with more and more sophisticated and sensitive technologies for data collection. Following techniques are applied for carrying out the consumer neuro-tests in real purchasing environment: Eye tracker: is a helpful method for analysis of consumer behaviour, POP and POS design and merchandising at the point of sale. In this case it is necessary to use the mobile version of the device to ensure authenticity of the study. Electroencephalography (EEG): provides very sensitive measurement of electric activity in brain but it is also very sensitive to muscle movements such as turning head, eye movements and other muscle activities. These signals endanger the EEG measurement of the person naturally moving in the shop. Same problem with disturbing elements can be found in biometric measurements of emotions based on the technologies using sensors applied on moving body. Behavioural studies in simulated purchasing environment It was found that consumer behaviour in real conditions can be transformed into laboratory conditions because deep subconscious processes and prejudices are activated in both cases. Eye tracker applied while testing the static pictures of planograms provides helpful knowledge on how the consumers visually browse the products displayed in shelves. If combined with other biometric and neurometric measurements and clear role of the selection, these studies can provide much practical information on the influence of various configurations of shelves when searching and choosing the products. Compromise between reality and monitoring carried out within the testing of consumer behaviour can be achieved if customers are watching the video from purchasing environment directly in the laboratory. All 38

participants of the test sample are watching the same video. This improves the control of testing and ability to stay in one position and disturbing elements become partly eliminated. Imaginary walk in video recorded in shop aisles is another possibility for observation of the passive purchasing behaviour. Interactive virtual reality (VR) is used in order to create a shopping experience. Virtual purchasing environment brings significant savings in comparison to designing and preparation of tests in shop. In addition, it provides better balance between naturalness and control than can be achieved by watching conventional videos in laboratory. Some neuromarketing agencies began to provide very detailed and interactive VRs including ideal 3D environment. In coming years, it is expected that this approach will be further developed as modern neuromarketing research tool. Application of neuromarketing in visual merchandising in the retail can contribute to uncovering and understanding of real consumer preferences in grocery stores and significantly increase their competitiveness. Effectiveness and energy demand relates to the issue of effective presentation of products in retail stores. Especially, while using such important marketing tool as lighting, it is necessary to take into account energy consumption, because lighting is one of the main cost items of the retail store. The retailer should focus not only at the elegant presentation of displayed goods, but it is also needed to look for a compromise between energy consumption of lights and their influence on consumer perception at food market. Energy consumption in individual retail stores may vary depending on format and segment. By far the largest energy consumption is in food stores to keep the food products in cold and also for presentation of the fresh products. For this reason, neuromarketing can contribute with important information while choosing the material technical base. That creates a sufficient platform for combination of effective and efficient equipment of the retail store. Conclusions Nowadays marketers and companies can choose the method of obtaining information about target markets. They can choose traditional, neuromarketing or combined form of market research. The combination of traditional and neuromarketing research represents the best form of current market research, and therefore it is expected that neuromarketing research methods could become a common part of traditional researches in the future. Neuromarketing is a hype, yet it is faced with a number of teething problems, including the costliness and complexity of its state-of-the-art techniques like electroencephalogram and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Such techniques require laboratory set-ups and so do not lend themselves to day-to-day market research processes. And neuromarketing still faces a number of other barriers. It still lacks supporting scientific proofs and it faces credibility issues as some early neuromarketing enterprises have made exaggerated, unverified and scientifically irresponsible claims.

Additionally, most studies still rely on laboratory set-ups and expensive technologies which do not allow the necessary scalability for the techniques to be applied more widely. In order to overcome these obstacles, policy makers could make strategic initiatives and introduce ethical codes. Yet as too many providers entered the neuromarketing field in its early days and failed to apply sound and robust scientific methods, a lot of credibility was lost. Although the methods applied nowadays have a more profound scientific basis, neuromarketing approaches still lack the scientific proofs that would support their case as meaningful methods

References [1] Berčík, J. and Rybanská, J., 2017. Methods used in neuromarketing. Chapter 4. In: Horská, E. and Berčík, J. (eds.) Neuromarketing in food retailing. Wageningen Academic Publishers, Wageningen, the Netherlands, pp. 83-100. [2] Bhalla, S. and Anuraag, S., 2009. Visual merchandising. Tata McGraw Hill Education Private Limited, New Delhi, India, 284 pp. [3] Borusiak, B., Pierański, B., Brohm, D. and Domurath, N., 2017. Application of neuromarketing in communication with the customer. Chapter 5. In: Horská, E. and Berčík, J. (eds.) Neuromarketing in food retailing. Wageningen Academic Publishers, Wageningen, the Netherlands, pp. 103-116. [4] Caire, G.G., 2013. Visual merchandising. Mirror and soul of a point of sale. Creative Group, Paderno Dugnano, Italy, 231 pp. [5] Desir, K., 2014. Better consumer understanding through neuromarketing in retail. Available at: http://tinyurl.com/ ljmd35s. [6] Ebster, C. and Garaus, M., 2011. Store design and visual merchandising: creating store space that encourages buying, 1st edition. Business Expert Press, New York, NY, USA, 150 pp. [7] Horská, E. and Berčík, J., 2013. The influence of light on consumer’s behaviour at the food market. Journal of Food Products Marketing 20(4): 429-440. [8] Kotler, P., 1973. Atmospherics as a marketing tool. Journal of Retailing 49: 48-64.

Agile E-Commerce Relevance Within the Expansion of the Digital Economy and the Phygital Business Models Challenged to Ensure Continuously Improved CX

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, i t u g a n o r . a i r a t o f t h e a i r m a n o a r d a T e n e i f u l l i n

Abstract

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Drd. Ioan Matei PURCĂREA

Marketing leaders are under constant pressure to come up with fresh ideas, embracing relevance, reducing the experience gap, increasing employees’ contribution to a better CX, paying more attention to today’s youth signal. They are facing continuous challenges within the context of consumers’ new normal and the new age of commerce, the expansion of the digital economy, the shift to more personalized CX being obvious. E-commerce contribution to sustainability in retail and agile e-commerce and the dynamic of m-commerce’s share of ecommerce are also other current preoccupations. Keywords: E-Commerce Relevance; M-Commerce; Digital Economy; Disruptive Technologies; Phygital Business Models; CX JEL Classification: D83; L21; M21; M31; M37; O31; O33

Embracing relevance, reducing the experience gap, increasing employees’ contribution to a better CX, paying more attention to today’s youth signal It is encouraging to see many companies speaking out about issues of their business relevance. There was a lot of debate gradually during a long period about this fundamental

concept (not only for documentation and information science, but also for information retrieval) of relevance, and an intense debate is still going on, this concept being deeply analyzed more recently in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science (Mizzaro, 1997). Ten years later (Saracevic, 2007), as all is flux according to Plato, the same Journal continued and updated a similar review to what appeared priorly (in 1975, as Part I), adding two new rigorous parts in analyzing this key notion of relevance. In 2013, Inc. Magazine (James, 2013), starting from the definition given by The Oxford English Dictionary (“the state of being closely connected or appropriate to the matter in hand”), underlined various characteristics of being relevant in the business world (such as: leadership, expertise, acumen, or emotional support). Eight years ago, the well-known leading business media brand Fast Company (2014) highlighted how business relevance changes both behavior (while sustaining change), and minds by causing a better business understanding by all those experiencing it fully (product, brand, or cause). Two years later, Branding Strategy Insider (Colon, 2016), let us know that brands compete against irrelevance in the attention economy (where everyone is your competitor), hence a better predictive key performance indicator (KPI) may be relevance needing to be measured (by social listening, making shorter feedback loops for digital products, and using Net Promoter Score). This opinion determined another one pledging for using a more suitable marketing metric taking into account the irrelevance of the brand relevance as a metric. In January 2021, the world’s leading cloud-based relevance platform, Coveo (2021), issued its first “Relevance Report 2021. Ecommerce” (commissioned by Coveo, Researchscape International conducted an online survey, December 26, 2020 - January 6, 2021), the respondents saying as follows: “W 9 f 10 xp pp q than in, f f xp pp . If ’ this experience gap, more bad news awaits. Almost three quarters of customers say they will abandon a brand after a short series of negative experiences, according to the results. And upand-coming digital natives — loyal customers of the future — w v .” This year, Coveo (2022) – recognized for its Co eo Rele ance Cloud™ ensuring delivering of relevant experiences in digital interactions based on applied AI – issued its second Relevance Report (entitled “Rele ance Report 2022: Ecommerce hoppers Re eal the ‘ rand Experience’ Gaps”), which did not reveal a significant CX improvement of the online shopping (that remained the main mode of consumption), respondents surveyed (working people, using a computer in companies with more than 250 employees) reproaching different aspects (such as: customer service shortfalls, 48%; website navigation, 32%; search deficiencies, 29%; posttransaction problems, 27%). ccording to this second Co eo’s report (signaling a very low level of ‘always’ rele ant online shopping experiences to customers’ buying habits and preferences,

only 6% of customers), retailers need to consider personalization and consumers’ journeys’ start, as well as reducing the experience gap and become friendly with the preferences of our younger demographics, as shown in figure below. And while pledging for the need of embracing relevance, this second Co eo’s report also underlined the significance of the brand trust, as well of the so-called (by Coveo) “Cold-Start Shopper Dilemma”. It is also worth remembering within this framework that as 70% of the site traffic is made up by cold-start shoppers it is important to know what is to be done so as to improve ROI on personalization for these shoppers (Polonioli, 2021).

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With regard to the brand experience’ gap it is also worth remembering that in the RDC Magazine issues it was underlined that CX with a brand is defined by the interactions with touchpoints (including the role of micro moments), hence the imperative of reducing the difference between customers’ expectations and brands’ beliefs (as behaviors’ code established in employees’ mind). Very recently, Mc insey’s representati es (Miller et al., 2022) highlighted the need to increase employees’ contribution to a better CX by empowering them in agilely acting while avoiding common pitfalls in this transformation, as shown in figure below.

Figure no. 2: To upgrade CX, plan and prioritize to avoid six common pitfalls Source: Miller, I., Neher, K., van den Broek, R. and Wintering, T., 2022. [pdf] McKinsey & Company, Marketing & Sales Practice, March 2022, p. 2 (work cited)

As shown by Shaw (2022), it is important to identify when customers decide or doesn’t decide (crossing the metaphorical Rubicon in that brand experience) to buy from a brand, so as to design, if that is the case, the suitable environment to encourage them to make the decision wanted by the brand, considering the importance of various aspects (such as: the cognitive process of choosing between two or more alternatives; where customers are in their decisionmaking journey; the difference between managing the process before and after the decision, adapting also to customers’ needs after decision-making). On the other hand, as shown by eMarketer (Fisher, 2022), digitally savvy Gen Z consumers have high digital expectations from brands regarding online shopping, what presupposes to be engaged and met where they are, and taking into account their susceptibility to both brand switching (if their demands are not met), and discovering and adopting new online behaviors. Consumers’ new normal and the new age of commerce. The expansion of the digital economy, the shift to more personalized CX being obvious Significant research by Accenture (2018) revealed how customer relevance is driving companies’ growth outcomes ( ccenture de eloping a model lin ing itality with firm

performance, to each company being assigned a so-called “Vitality core”), the impact of companies’ capabilities (targeting new opportunities, designing for customers, building engagement, scaling with partners, rewiring culture) with regard to become and stay hyperrele ant to their customers, and how consumers’ perception (within ccenture’s annual Global Consumer Pulse ur ey) of a brand’s rele ance dri es their purchasing beha iors. This was seen as a period that is just beginning, as shown in figure below. Which of course raises the question to what extent (while acting on the path to obtain companies’ growth outcomes) an effective ecommerce strategy can contribute to driving growth based on valorizing the growth opportunities provided by each selling channel, improving CX.

Figure no. 3: A New Era of Hyper-Relevance Source: Accenture, 2018. Relevance: The beating heart of a living business achieving sustainable growth through Hyper-Relevance. [pdf] Accenture Research, p. 2 (work cited)

Consumers’ new normal is having with minimal effort a very nearly instantaneous access to products, says the reputed eCommerce platform Linnworks (2021) that is known as helping online retailers (including based on its Total Commerce platform) automate key processes, reduce costs and grow their business. According to Linnworks (n.d.), for online merchants Total Commerce is that type of commerce able to “ensure a seamless customer journey, regardless of when, where, and how the shopper interacts with your business”, consumers’ insights being essential to maximize their engagement, and consumers’ purchase fulfilling process needing to

be E2E frictionless (finalized by orders’ fulfillment until placement into consumers’ hands), once engagement is achieved. The Linnworks report entitled “The great ecommerce acceleration. How retailers need to adapt to the effortless economy” showed, among other aspects, that: in order to achieve Total Commerce (selling wherever consumers want to shop, consumers being the drivers of it) retailers need to adapt better understand the challenges (omnichannel and convenience) and prioritize business strategies (by rethinking their selling strategy and logistics, considering new platforms like marketplaces and social channels, one hand, as well as proper supply chain diversification and fulfillment strategies), delivering that by consumers demanded CX; a key part in building a competitive CX is played by automation. The key processes targeted by retailers’ prioritized investment in technology (within the context in which a major priority for 2022 being investment in omnichannel capabilities), and why retailers invest in automation are shown in the below figure. Other significant aspects revealed by this study were regarding what respondents’ opinions about supply chain disruptions’ impact and identified key reasons (as shown in the next figure below), as well the necessary key mitigation strategies to build the capacity for resistance and recovery.

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It is also well-known that the most comprehensive set of insights within the limitations of its class is offered by the Adobe Digital Economy Index (Adobe, 2022) covering significant visits to U.S. retail sites (over 1 trillion) and Stock Keeping Units (over 100 million SKUs, in 18 product categories). New U.S. e-commerce data (U.S. consumers spent online, from March 2020 through February 2022, $1.7 trillion) published recently on the occasion of Adobe Summit revealed the expansion of the digital economy after two years of COVID-19 pandemic, the shift to more personalized CX being obvious. Trends and new consumer shopping behaviors were identified by Adobe as follows: inflation contributes without doubt to e-commerce growth (see the first figure below); e-commerce is being reshaped by grocery shopping, groceries becoming a major e-commerce category; the largest e-commerce category is remaining electronics (see next figure below/); apparel demand fallen heavily within the context in which consumers spent more time at home; within supply chain disruptions have been seen by consumers many out-of-stock messages (60 billion OOS between March 2020 - February 2022); Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) orders increased considerably (growth slowing only in recent months, but demand remaining

strong), consumers both spending more online, and looking for new ways to manage their money; the fulfillment method known as Curbside Pickup (placing order online and collecting it from convenient location; already a major fulfilment method for retailers using it) saw rise (accounting for 20% of all online orders this year until now) as many consumers are now accustomed to value both speed, and convenience.

Figure no. 6: Adobe Digital Economy Index: Impact of Inflation on E-Commerce Growth (U.S.) Source: Adobe, 2022. Adobe: U.S. Consumers Spent $1.7 Trillion Online During the Pandemic, Rapidly Expanding the Digital Economy, Press Release, Tuesday, March 15, 2022 (work cited)

Figure no. 7: Adobe Digital Economy Index: Online Sales by Category (U.S.) Source: Adobe, 2022. Adobe: U.S. Consumers Spent $1.7 Trillion Online During the Pandemic, Rapidly Expanding the Digital Economy, Press Release, Tuesday, March 15, 2022 (work cited)

E-commerce contribution to sustainability in retail Purcarea et al. (2022) highlighted the relationship between the concepts of circular economy, sustainability, and sustainable development, one hand and the relationship between retailers’ sustainability journeys and consumers’ perspecti e towards sustainable consumption, the other hand. Within this framework, it was underlined, among other aspects, the need of more comprehensive studies concerning retailers’ digital transformation to enable both consumers’ adoption of more sustainable lifestyles, and consumers’ making of informed choices in the omnichannel world. More recently, a report by Coresight Research (Weinswig, 2022) published within their Innovator Profile series made reference to a sustainability-focused e-commerce enablement innovator founded in 2019, EcoCart (according to Coresight Research categorization it falls under “reducing waste and increasing sustainability”), known as providing retailers both an ecommerce plugin in order to offer customers at checkout a carbon-neutral order option (by deploying algorithms based on product type, package weight, shipping distance etc.), and with the opportunity to understand (thanks to EcoCart’s analytics dashboard) the environmental impacts of their product lifecycles’ specific parts. From the point of view of consumers, they have such an option to make their order carbon neutral (by paying an extra cost) when shopping at over 10,000 stores, which is possible on the basis of EcoCart’s Google Chrome extension that calculates the orders’ carbon footprint. EcoCart’s customers (92%) expressed their desire to support brands investing in nature- for ecosystem resilience and regeneration, which is not surprising, as long as EcoCart is struggling to reduce the detrimental impacts of e-commerce by making online shopping a climate-friendly and ecologically sustainable experience. It is also worth mentioning that also according to Coresight Research supply chains’ optimization (E2E, being known, for instance the role of fast delivery in improving CX) is a constant preoccupation of retailers considering more and more the emerging technologies as key growth drivers in harmony with sustainability initiatives.

Agile e-commerce and the dynamic of m-commerce’s share of ecommerce The well-known comprehensive source of information on how to operate in a digital world, eMarketer, provided recently a global outlook for retail sales and retail ecommerce sales in this year and beyond, showing, among other aspects, that the worldwide ecommerce sales will exceed, in 2022, $5 trillion for the first time (more than 1/5 of overall retail sales), and total spending (in spite of slowing growth) will to rise and fall actively $7 trillion by 2025 (eMarketer, 2022), as shown in figure below. This valuable research was commissioned by ChannelAdvisor in 2021.

Figure no. 8: Retail Ecommerce Sales Worldwide, 2020-2025 Source: eMarketer, 2022. eMarketer Global Ecommerce Forecast Report. [pdf] Insider Intelligence Inc., Report presented by ChannelAdvisor, p. 3 (work cited)

According to this eMarketer Global Ecommerce Forecast Report digital buyers’ spending on ecommerce around the world is expected to be with $603.68 billion more in 2022 than last year, by 2025 being expected that digital shoppers will spend online $7.391 trillion. A top 12 countries, ranked as % of total worldwide ecommerce, 2022 is presented below.

Figure no. 9: Top 12 Countries, Ranked as % of Total Worldwide Ecommerce, 2022 Source: eMarketer, 2022. eMarketer Global Ecommerce Forecast Report. [pdf] Insider Intelligence Inc., Report presented by ChannelAdvisor, p. 6 (work cited)

The above-mentioned valuable report also revealed significant aspects regarding mcommerce (see the figure below), within the context in which its share of ecommerce is still growing, even if very slowly now because of both the comfort level (with shopping and buying via mobile) reached by the digital users in North America and Europe (despite their still existent

preference for larger-screen computers in order to finalize their transactions). This dynamic is still evolving, but slower than before), and the fewer new users starting an e-commerce journey via mobile every year (taking into account what is happening in emerging markets where smartphones have already become common, while internet access is rapidly close to become very common).

Figure no. 10: Retail Mcommerce Sales Worldwide, 2020-2025 (trillions, % change, % of total ecommerce sales, % of total retail sales Source: eMarketer, 2022. eMarketer Global Ecommerce Forecast Report. [pdf] Insider Intelligence Inc., Report presented by ChannelAdvisor, p. 8 (work cited)

The today’s diversity of stimulus brands can take on are affecting consumers’ choice, consumers being determined to buy by their motivations (utilitarian or hedonic) associated to purchases, and mainly in digital environment consumers are most valuing their CX (Pinto de Lima and Almeida Monteiro, 2022), their trust in brands depending on CX improvement. Recently published research findings by Ça ıcı (2022) brought to our attention the role of digital agility (defined by IGI Global dictionary as company’s ability to enable, update, change or adapt rapidly its business processes) in the context of digital transformation impact (which is longterm) on the process of by both companies and consumers joint value creation. Within this framework Ça ıcı made reference to digital transformation as digital technologies’ use to enhance CX by transforming business practices and operations extending throughout a company (Vial, 2019). On the other hand, as shown by Kumar (2022), in a VUCA environment companies need to match digital transformation with improved CX, constantly reinventing themselves. And as demonstrated by Purcarea et al. (2021), there is a real need today for companies to take the test of VUCA time for Retail 4.0 impacted by the Industry 4.0 technologies, becoming real innovators, integrating digital into all aspects of the retail business and creating customers’ realtime digital experience (seamless and immersive Omni channel experiences) with reduced friction. Of course, while analyzing how agile it is e-commerce, we need to recall some aspects already discussed by us, such as those highlighted by CG’s representati es (Baxter et al., 2021):

- The importance of agility as of one of the most common challenges to e-commerce success (see figure below).

Figure no. 11: A Scarcity of Talent and Poor Speed and Agility Are the most common challenges to E-Commerce Success Source: Baxter, A., Paizanis, G., Robnett, S. and Yang, H., 2021. Building a World-Class E-Commerce Organization, BCG, December 13, 2021 (work cited)

- Both the organizational structure, and the routes to market specific to an e-commerce organization, recalling CG’s archetypes shown in the below picture.

Figure no. 12: Four archetypes serve as a guide to setting up an e-commerce organization Source: BCG, Leading in the New Reality. Digital Transformation [pdf], <four-e-commerce-archetypes-pdf>, cited by Baxter, A., Paizanis, G., Robnett, S. and Yang, H., 2021. Building a World-Class E-Commerce Organization, BCG, December 13, 2021 (work cited)

Conclusions: The relevance of e-commerce within the phygital business models challenged to ensure continuously improved CX As shown by the founder of the experiential marketing mix (7Es: Experience, Exchange, Extension, Emphasis, Empathy, Emotional touchpoints, Emic/Etic process), Wided Batat (2019), the proper mix of 7Es allowing companies to design a proper CX maximizing lived experience (the purpose of the consumption being evaluated based on symbolic and aesthetic criteria) within the phygital context integrating new technologies, hence experiential mar eters’ challenge to better understand the emerging both experiences, and behaviors. In our opinion, if we are to gain further conclusions regarding the relevance of e-commerce within the phygital business models challenged to ensure continuously improved CX it is important that the analysis must be deeper, considering the following aspects: - Raj De Datta (2021), CEO and Co-Founder at Bloomreach, underlined the difference between a customer (who desires to make a purchase) and a seeker (who desires to fulfill an intention), and showed that as more first-time seekers (demanding improved experience) have entered the ecommerce space mainly due to COVID-19 pandemic it is important to create digital experiences with the seeker in mind so as to better understand their motivations, achieving customers’ understanding on a deeper level. - According to Gartner’s igital Commerce ur ey published on 29 October 2021, there is a particular focus of marketing leaders on digital-first value creation and CX from the point of view of their investments, as they are recognizing the need to evolve companies’ digital commerce capabilities. - The schematically up-to-date marketing management model recommended by Kovshova (2022) within the digital transformation of business and society, as shown in figure below.

Figure no. 13: The up-to-date marketing management model in digital transformation of business and society Source: Kovshova, I., 2022. Digital Transformation: The Age of Innovations in Business and Society, Open access peer- v w p , v “D T f ”, E P , A., D , ., Achim, M. V. and Mirza, N., 2022 (work cited)

- The fact that the so-called Mobile App Experience (MAX), as shown by Airship (2022), is already transforming how businesses manage relationships with consumers, a new digital center of CX is emerging, namely mobile apps, and the new normal is represented by app-enabled experiences. - There is a significant impact of social apps on livestream shoppers (Lebow, 2022), taking into account the rise of purchased products during a livestreaming event by Internet users worldwide (see the bellowed figure).

Figure no. 14: From which social media platforms have Internet users worldwide purchased products during a livestreaming event Source: Lebow, S., 2022. Which social apps get livestream shoppers to open their wallets? eMarketer, Mar 31, 2022 (work cited)

- The fact that a panel discussion (entitled “ esigning Tomorrow’s Retail Experiences: From Experimentation to Mass Adoption: Trending Technologies and Their Potential to Transform Retail”) on the occasion of day four, March 30, 2022, of the Shoptalk 2022 (which confirmed that livestreaming and the metaverse are top of mind) in Las Vegas, US, concluded that top retail-tech trends are visual search and personalization (Coresight Research, 2022). - According to Gartner (2022), in order to differentiate CX and deliver long-term results, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) should explore digital-first value creation (see figure below).

Figure no. 15: Long-term planning: CMOs should explore digital-first value creation to differentiate customer experience and deliver long-term results Source: Gartner, 2022. Digital Commerce Strategic Priorities by Industry, Infographic (work cited)

As we showed in the last RDC Magazine issue (Purcarea, 2021), there is an obvious mar eters’ need to reach the best return on CX by adapting accordingly the e-commerce strategies based on strong built data organization, valorizing digital technologies within integrated supply chain. Hence the pressure of working developing new operating models, evolving companies’ digital commerce capabilities, ensuring better customers’ understanding, considering the app-enabled experiences and the impact of social apps on livestream shoppers etc., exploring digital-first value creation and so on.

References Accenture, 2018. Relevance: The beating heart of a living business achieving sustainable growth through HyperRelevance. [pdf] Accenture Research, pp. 1-8. Available at <Accenture-A-New-Era-of-Hyper-Relevance.pdf> [Accessed 2 March 2022]. Adobe, 2022. Adobe: U.S. Consumers Spent $1.7 Trillion Online During the Pandemic, Rapidly Expanding the Digital Economy, Press Release, Tuesday, March 15, 2022. [online] Available at <https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2022/Adobe-U.S.-Consumers-Spent-1.7-Trillion-Online-During-thePandemic-Rapidly-Expanding-the-Digital-Economy/default.aspx> [Accesseed 15 March 2022]. Airship, 2022. 9 Experience Trends in 2022 for the Mobile Consumer. [pdf] Airship Global Survey Profiles the New Mobile Consumer. Available at <airship-9-trends-ebook-en.pdf> [Accessed 3 March 2022]. Batat, W., 2019. Experiential Marketing. Consumer Behavior, Customer Experience and The 7Es, 1st Edition, Published January 18, 2019 by Routledge, eBook Published 28 January 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315232201. Baxter, A., Paizanis, G., Robnett, S. and Yang, H., 2021. Building a World-Class E-Commerce Organization, BCG, December 13, 2021. Available at <https://www.bcg.com/publications/2021/build-world-class-e-commerceorganization> [Accessed 25 March 2022]. Ça ıcı, N. M., 2022. igital Transformation and Co-Creation of Value: The Role of Digital Agility, Chapter 2, pp. 23-36, in “Impact of igital Transformation on the e elopment of New usiness Models and Consumer Experience, Rodrigues, M. A., Proença, Joã, P. F., 2022 (Editors), IGI Global, 2022. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-79989179-6.ch002. Colon, G., 2016. Three Ways To Measure Brand Relevance, Branding Strategy Insider, December 21, 2016. [online] Available at <https://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/three-ways-to-measure-brand-relevance/> [2 March 2022]. Coresight Research, 2022. Shoptalk 2022 Day Four and Wrap-Up: Key Retail Trends Include Personalization, Livestreaming and the Metaverse, Coresight Research, March 31, 2022. [online] Available at <https://coresight.com/research/shoptalk-2022-day-four-and-wrap-up-key-retail-trends-include-personalizationlivestreaming-and-the-metaverse/?> [Accessed 1 April 2022]. Coveo, 2021. Relevance Report 2021. Ecommerce. [pdf] January, 2021, pp. 5. Available at: <Relevance Ecommerce Report.pdf> [Accessed 8 March 2022]. Co eo, 2022. Rele ance Report 2022: Ecommerce hoppers Re eal the ‘ rand Experience’ Gaps. [pdf] January 2022. Available at: <CCS-1809_REPORT_EcommRelev_.pdf> [Accessed 8 March 2022]. e atta, R., 2021. Introducing ‘The igital ee er’: Guide for Winning Digital Experiences, Bloomreach, Jun 01, 2021. <https://www.bloomreach.com/en/blog/2021/introducing-the-digital-seeker-a-guide-for-winning-digitalexperiences> [Accessed 23 February 2022]. Jun 01, 2021 eMarketer, 2022. eMarketer Global Ecommerce Forecast Report. [pdf] Insider Intelligence Inc., Report presented by ChannelAdvisor, pp. 2-3, 5-8. Available at <eMarketer Global Ecommerce Forecast Report.pdf> [Accessed 8 March 2022]. Fast Company, 2014. What makes a business relevant? April 3, 2014. [online] Available at <https://www.fastcompany.com/3028544/3-ways-to-make-your-company-relevant> [2 March 2022]. Fisher, B., 2022. What digitally savvy Gen Z consumers expect from brands, eMarketer, Mar 1, 2022. [online] Available at < ttps://www.emarketer.com/content/what-digitally-savvy-gen-z-consumers-expect-brands?> [Accessed 2 March 2022]. Gartner, 2021. The State of Digital Commerce. [pdf] Gartner for Marketers, Published 29 October 2021, p. 4. Available at <state-of-digital-commerce-research.pdf> [Accessed 3 February 2022]. Gartner, 2022. Digital Commerce Strategic Priorities by Industry. [pdf] Available at <digital_commerce_strategic_priorities_by_industry_infographic.pdf> [Accessed 17 February 2022]. James, G., 2013. 4 Ways to Become More Relevant, Inc. Magazine, June 18, 2013. [online] Available at <https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/4-ways-to-become-more-relevant.html> [2 March 2022].

Kovshova, I., 2022. Digital Transformation: The Age of Innovations in Business and Society, Open access peerre iewed chapter, From the edited olume “ igital Transformation”, Edited by Petrillo, ., e Felice, F., chim, M. V. and Mirza, N., 2022. DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.102797. Kumar, D., 2022. Digital Transformation: Technology and New Business Models as Drivers of Customer Experience. [pdf] Chapter 4, p. 58, in “Impact of igital Transformation on the e elopment of New usiness Models and Consumer Experience, Rodrigues, M. A., Proença, Joã, P. F., 2022 (Editors), IGI Global, 2022. DOI: DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-9179-6.ch004. Lebow, S., 2022. Which social apps get livestream shoppers to open their wallets? eMarketer, Mar 31, 2022. [online] Available at <https://www.emarketer.com/content/social-apps-livestream-shoppers?> [Accessed 4 March 2022]. Linnworks, 2021. The great ecommerce acceleration. How retailers need to adapt to the effortless economy. [pdf]. December 2021, pp. 4, 6-7, 13, 16-17, 21. Available at <61d4228d9830505cdca16ba2_Linnworks_The great commerce acceleration_Research Whitepaper_Dec21.pdf> [Accessed 4 March 2022]. Linnworks, n.d. Customer experience is key as the era of Total Commerce is here, Linnworks Blog, n.d. [online] Available at <https://www.linnworks.com/blog/customer-experience-is-key-as-the-era-of-total-commerce-is-here> [Accessed 4 March 2022]. Miller, I., Neher, K., van den Broek, R. and Wintering, T., 2022. [pdf] McKinsey & Company, Marketing & Sales Practice, March 2022, pp. 1-6. Available at < six-customer-experience-pitfalls-to-avoid.pdf> [Accessed 21 March 2022]. Mizzaro, S., 1997. Relevance: The whole history, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, September 1997, pp. 810-832. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199709)48:9<810::AID-ASI6>3.0.CO;2-U. Pinto de Lima, A., Almeida Monteiro, N., 2022. E-Commerce: The Influence of Hedonic and Utilitarian Motivations on Generations X, Y, and Z. [pdf] Chapter 7, p. 129-148, in “Impact of igital Transformation on the Development of New Business Models and Consumer Experience, Rodrigues, M. A., Proença, Joã, P. F., 2022 (Editors), IGI Global, 2022. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-9179-6.ch007. Polonioli, A., 2021. ROI on Personalization for Cold-Start Shopper, Coveo, June 9, 2021. [online] Available at <https://blog.coveo.com/roi-personalization-cold-start-shopper-challenge/> [2 March 2022]. Purcărea, T.; Ioan-Franc, V.; Ionescu, Ş.- .; Purcărea, I.M.; Purcărea, V.L.; Purcărea, I.; Mateescu-Soare, M.C.; Platon, O.-E.; Orzan, A.-O. Major hifts in ustainable Consumer eha ior in Romania and Retailers’ Priorities in Agilely Adapting to It. Sustainability 2022, 14, 1627. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14031627. Purcarea, I.M.; Purcarea, I.; Purcarea, T., 2021. The Test of VUCA Time for Retail 4.0 Impacted by the Industry 4.0 Technologies, by Creating Customers' Real-Time Digital Experience, Faster Recovering from the Pandemic, and Adapting to the Next Normal, Book Chapter published in Monograph of Under the Pressure of Digitalization: Challenges and Solutions at Organizational and Industrial Levels; Edu, T.; Schipor, G.L.; Vancea, D.P.C.; Zaharia, R.M., Eds.; Filodiritto Publisher: Bologna, Italy, Under the pressure of digitalization: Challenges and solutions at organizational and industrial levels, 2021; pp. 40–45. ISBN 979-12-80225-27-6. Purcarea, I. M., 2021. E-commerce, Q-commerce, New Technologies and Omnichannel Consumers’ Personalized Experience, Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, vol. 12(4), pp. 38-51, December. Saracevic, T., 2007. Relevance: A review of the literature and a framework for thinking on the notion in information science. Part III: Behavior and effects of relevance, Volume58, Issue13, November 2007, pp. 2126-2144, 10 October 2007. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20681. Shaw, C., 2022. Critical Skill: Learn How to Recognize When People Have Made a Decision, LinkedIn, March 1, 2022. [online] Available at <https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/critical-skill-learn-how-recognize-when-people-havemade-colin-shaw?> [Accessed 1 March 2022]. Vial, G., 2019. Understanding digital transformation: A review and a research agenda, The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Volume 28, Issue 2, June 2019, pp. 118-144. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsis.2019.01.003. Weinswig, D., 2022. Innovator Profile: EcoCart Offsets Carbon Emissions in E-Commerce, Coresight Research, March 18, 2022. [online] Available at <https://coresight.com/research/innovator-profile-ecocart-offsets-carbonemissions-in-e-commerce/?> [Accessed 19 March 2022].

Anchor Department Store, Catalyst Nobel Fest, Sustainable Academic Relations, and Cultural Bridges

Prof. Dr. Bernd HALLIER

Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier, President of the European Retail Academy (ERA: http://www.european-retail-academy.org/), an Honorary Member of the Romanian Distribution Committee, and distinguished Member of both the Editorial Board of “Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine”, and the Editorial Board of RAU “Holistic Marketing Management” brought to our attention other great events happening in the last time, and allowed us to present them. It is also worth remembering that: immediately after visiting Romania for the first time on the occasion of the 24th International Congress of the International Association for the Distributive Trade (AIDA Brussels), Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier sent us, in May 1998, a memorable letter we have referred initially in the Journal of the Romanian Marketing Association (AROMAR), no. 5/1998, and also later, in 2010, in the first issue of the Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine; the Romanian-American University (RAU) has awarded Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier a “Diploma of Special Academic Merit”; the “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest, has awarded Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier a “Diploma of Excellence”.

Anchor Department Store The start of Department Stores as drivers of innovation as retail format and as anchor of down-town life-style goes back to about 1875 according to Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier’s retail-cycle theory. After World War II the big players Selfridges, Printemps, Jelmoli, Rinascente, Ahlers & Holm and Bon Marche founded in Lugano the Association IGDS to revitalize urban shopping and to exchange in Europe on international level their experience and to disseminate their knowledge jointly. Today 45 department-store-companies from a total of 39 countries all around the world bundle their vocational competences by IGDS (see: LINK).

At its 7th Global Department Store Summit (GDSS) which will be organized on June 9th/10th 2022 in Seattle/USA twenty-six CEOs and Top Executives will elaborate their successstories and will share their insights with their colleagues around the globe (more: LINK). ________________________________________

Catalyst Nobel Fest The Astana Economic Forum was profiling the independent Kazakhstan by creating a Eurasian Economic Scientists Association (EECA), G-Global as an umbrella for all countries and a Team of Nobel Laureates participating at the annual events. Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier became member of EECA and the G-Global Support Board. Just lately in March together with the 2007 Nobel Laureate Prof. Dr. Raekwon Chung he was running an ERA-Webinar about the UN-Sustainability Goals 2030 (see: LINK) - and they will support also the Nobel Fest at MidApril 2022.

A total of 12 Nobel Laureates from different disciplines and high-ranking speakers from all around the globe will be involved in this hybrid activity. The input of the ERA-Webinar and a Memorandum of Understanding about Academic relations beyond any borders will be discussed at the Nobel Fest too (see also: LINK). ________________________________________

Sustainable Academic Relations “Since the end of February 2022, the World is starting a new period of serious disruption!” Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier said at the ERA-Webinar about Sustainability. “All economies around the Globe are changing dramatically and the outcome cannot predict as also budget-planning is based on total uncertainty about costs of destruction and migration; financing of weapons and destroyed or blocked sources for food or energy; delayed total supply chains and new orientation for markets.” he added. “Important for the European Retail Academy are now sustainable Academic relations like being built up in the past with partner universities around the world and also in respect of former joint actions from Ukraine and Russian partners from Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Donetsk, Odessa and Kiew. Those personal friendships beyond all political and religious orientation are the Credo of our Academic community and our obligation for the Future Generation” Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier claimed.

At the close of the First ERA-Webinar aimed for the support of the UN Sustainability Goals top players from Kazakhstan, the Nobel Laureate Prof. Dr. Raekwon Chung and Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier signed the Draft of a MOU being enlarged at the Nobel Festival organized in Kazakhstan from April 12th-15th 2022. The MOU will be enlarged during that event by additional players and details in content. Generally, it is formulated to prepare joint recommendations to the Leaders of G-20 and the United Nations Organizations. ________________________________________

Cultural Bridges The last quarter of this century did bring prosperity via global trade: one of the drivers was the revitalization of the Silk Road. Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier has visited in that period many times Kazakhstan but also Uzbekistan, Mongolia and China discussing the development with Nobel Laureates at the Astana Economic Summit or with representatives of universities and business of the players along this network.

For Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier beside the economic effects for the increase of the Wealth of Nations measured in GNP also the cultural bridges were utmost important for the understanding of those countries. “We in the West can learn a lot of the ancient China or about philosophy from Farabi (870 - 950) who studied logic, medicine and sociology and travelled through Kazakhstan, Syria, Iraq and Egypt. Beside the Greek philosopher Aristoteles, he was called the second master in the Arabic tradition. The three Madrasas at the Registan Place in Samarkand had been built between 1417 and 1660 and had been used for study; they had been the universities of those times.” Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier stated remembering his visits. “Going to teach about the West was always also a process to learn from the East” he added. “In respect to the own mindset it became a growing personal obligation to work for World Peace and resilience between the different tribes of the world population”. ________________________________________

● The Bucharest

University of Economic Studies (ASE) has celebrated its 109th

Anniversary, to mark its establishment by Royal Decree on April 6, 1913 Note from the Editorial Board ASE Bucharest, the leader of economic and public administration higher education in Romania, has celebrated its 109th Anniversary, to mark its establishment by Royal Decree on April 6, 1913. This special anniversary has a special historical resonance for higher economic education in Romania. As we remembered on another occasion: to do an act of justice to higher economic education involves considering its history, that we write by thinking and acting; we live in a world where we care and history and historical narrative are always based on the experiences of time and space. It is well-known that the contribution of higher education to economic success is vital, the role of higher education being played at the necessary intersection between economic and social challenges, such as economic growth, sustainable development, the ability to compete on a local, national, regional, continental and global level, creating jobs, reducing unemployment, etc. It is widely recognized the impact of higher education on the transformation of social and economic relations, institutions, policies and practices. People are the real source of the competitive advantage of a university actively involved in developing and disseminating knowledge and skills, building and cultivating students' cognitive character, engaging in activities of your local community.

History and historical narrative are always based on the experiences of time and space

The Bucharest University of Economic Studies (ASE) has celebrated its 109th Anniversary, to mark its establishment by Royal Decree on April 6, 1913

On 6 April, 2022 ASE Bucharest, the leader of economic and public administration higher education in Romania, has celebrated its 109th Anniversary, to mark its establishment by Royal Decree on April 6, 1913 (https://www.ase.ro/ase_responsive_en/News_Events/2022/april/program_ASE_109_en.pdf). Within the series of events dedicated to celebrating the 109th anniversary of the prestigious existence of The Bucharest University of Economic Studies (ASE) there were also the Festive Gathering of the Academic Community and the Conferral of Diplomas: “The VIRGIL MADGEARU Academic Merit”; “The Honorary Title of Emeritus Professor” (Aula Magna). Among those honored in this beautiful festive setting – with the participation of the distinguished Professors Nicolae Istudor (ASE Rector) and Dumitru Miron (President of ASE Senate) – was also a member of the scientific association Romanian Distribution Committee. It is well-known, for instance, that: reference was made to the Romanian Distribution Committee in the study “Marketing issues in transitional economies”, Springer, 1st edition, August 31, 1999 (Rajeev Batra, William Davidson Institute, Business & Economics, page 167; William Davidson Institute has been established at the University of Michigan in 1992); the European Rapporteur for “Green Book on Commerce” (prepared by the European Commission) sent – on the occasion of the works of the 1997 General Assembly of the Romanian Distribution Committee – the project in question (of the „Green Book”, whose translation was later published by CIDE, INCE,

Romanian Academy) at the same time giving thanks for the contribution that the Romanian Distribution Committee brings to “the professional development of European Commerce”. An article published in the Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, vol. 7(1), pp. 22-26, April 2016 – and entitled “Significant Behavioral Shifts among Consumers and Actions to Take Accordingly by Consumer-Goods Companies and Retailers Enabling their Real-Time Collaboration” – made reference to a book that appeared at the prestigious publishing house “Expert”, Bucharest, being entitled “Packaging. Attitude for quality: Technology, Economy, Environment” (Author, Anca Purcărea; Editor, Valeriu Ioan-Franc – https://www.crdaida.ro/our-team/valeriu-ioan-franc-2/ ). In this context, it was also highlighted that a valuable academic debate – attended by outstanding personalities such as: Gheorghe Zaman, Viorel Petrescu, Iacob Cătoiu, Aurel Vainer, Alexandru Redeş, Beniamin Cotigaru (on April 3, 2013, on the special occasion of the celebration of the centennial of ASE Bucharest, the Romanian Ministry of National Education awarded the Diploma of Honor to venerable Professor Beniamin Cotigaru for his significant contribution to the development of education and scientific research in the field of Commodity Science, in honor of his outstanding performance), Virgil Popa and others – contributed to the success of this book.

● Prof. Dr. Eliot SOREL, received the 2021 Romanians of Washington, DC Community Award

Note from the Editorial Board Prof. Dr. Eliot SOREL, MD, DLFAPA, received the 2021 Romanians of Washington, DC Community Award at Cosmos Club in Washington, DC on the eve of the celebration of the Unification of Moldavia and Wallachia. The well-known global health leader, health systems performance expert, practicing physician, and Clinical Professor of Global Health, Health Policy and Management and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, The George Washington University (GWU), Washington, DC, USA, is also a talented speaker and author, a great writer. Formed rigorously, through hard work and a passion for learning, always noting subtle changes around him, Professor Sorel has an expressive sentence fluency in sharing clearly interesting and important ideas, being creatively gifted, transferring knowledge and wisdom to the audience and readers, and having important feedbacks. In the opinion of Professor Sorel, health, education, and development together as a well-integrated cluster are essential to global security. Dr. Sorel gave and gives continued strong support for the valuable idea of designing, allocating the necessary resources and executing an implementation plan for a comprehensive global initiative a la Marshall Plan focusing on health, education and development to enhance life, wellbeing and global security for all nations, across the life cycle and across economies.

Dr. Eliot SOREL received the 2021 Romanians of Washington, DC Community Award

After an open process which took place in October and November 2021, the Romanians of Washington, DC (Romanians of DC), a non-governmental, not-for-profit organization (founded in 2018), nominated the distinguished Professor Eliot Sorel as a recipient of the 2021 Romanians of Washington, DC Community Award (Source: https://romaniansofdc.org/2022/01/25/the-recipients-of-the-2021-romanians-of-washington-dccommunity-awards-are-announced/). Professor Eliot Sorel, MD, DLFAPA, is a well-known global health leader, health systems performance expert, practicing physician, and Clinical Professor of Global Health, Health Policy and Management and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, The George Washington University (GWU), Washington, DC, USA (Former President, World Association of Social Psychiatry). Allow us to remember his article entitled “The COVID‑19 Pandemic: A National and Global Social Contracts Stress Test”, and published online on August 14, 2020 [Sorel E. The Covid‑19 Pandemic: A National and Global Social Contracts Stress Test. World Soc Psychiatry 2020;2:72-3.] Professor Eliot Sorel, well-known as a catalyzer in promoting Romania’s culture in the United States of America (the Romanian monasteries, food, crafts, music and dance), initiated and led the so-called „Opening the Gates to Romania” project at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, in 1999. On that occasion, a wooden Maramures church was also built piece by piece on the National Mall in the center of Washington as part of the year 1999’s Festival. The

world’s largest museum and research complex, the Smithsonian (founded in 1846), is a true steward and ambassador of cultural connections, its generous work wisely promoting understanding of world cultures. It is also worth mentioning that on 3rd October 2008, at the Romanian Academy, the Aspen Institute Romania – Mr. Mircea Geoana, the President of the Aspen Institute Romania, became NATO Deputy Secretary General in October 2019, after a distinguished domestic and international career – organized the Book Launch: “The Marshall Plan- Lessons Learned for the 21st Century” edited by Eliot Sorel and Pier Carlo Padoan and published at OECD. (Sources: http://www.aspeninstitute.ro/articole/228/The-Marshall-Plan-Lessons-Learned-for-the21st-Century.html; https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/who_is_who_167942.htm) In December 2004, the “Diplomatic Gazette” Brussels, the Official Organ of the Belgian Diplomatic Club, presented a book entitled “Diplomatic and protocol customs” (Author Theodor Purcarea, Professor at the Romanian-American University), the Foreword being written by Ion Smedescu, Founding Rector of the Romanian–American University, and the Introduction being signed by René Boissin, President of the Belgian Diplomatic Club. The author of this book had the honor to be congratulated by His Excellency Philippe Étienne, a reputed French diplomat who served as Ambassador of France also to Romania (2002-2005), and now being the Ambassador of France in the United States. Allow us to remember within this framework that the above-mentioned book made reference, among other aspects, to: the first NATO Meeting on Romanian soil, October 2004, Poiana Brasov; the books “The End of History and the Las Man” (Francis Fukuyama) and “The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of the World Order” (Samuel P. Huntington); the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos and the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre; how Romanian diplomacy (conducted at that moment by Mr. Mircea Geoana) confirmed the continuity of the substantial concern for certainties; the book author’s correspondence with the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in December 2003; the letter received by the book author from the U.S. Ambassador to Romania, and dated on July 15, 2003; the letter received by the book author from the German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, and dated on May 11, 1994; the significant discussion held by the author with Mr. Mircea Geoana at the headquarters of our Embassy in Vienna in October 1993 in the context of Romania’s admission to the Council of Europe; the challenging debate on the New World Order and the various wake-up calls inviting to reimagining the Future World Order etc. Some years ago, the Romanian–American University expressed its respect for Professor Eliot Sorel’s lecture on President Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States. We underlined within this framework that on April 8, 2016, Professor Eliot Sorel congratulated the Romanian-American University on the occasion of its 25th Anniversary (Source: http://holisticmarketingmanagement.ro/eliot-sorel-lecture-on-president-woodrow-wilson-28thpresident-of-the-united-states-an-enduring-vision-in-the-21st-century/).

Finally let us add that we had the great pleasure of discussing with Professor Eliot Sorel about the first impressions of His Excellency Alfred H. Moses, Former U.S. Ambassador to Romania (1994 – 1997; before the appointment HE also served as President of the American Jewish Committee), after the successful Book Launch – “Bucharest Diary: Romania’s Journey from Darkness to Light” – on the occasion of the “Bucharest Diary. Memories of an American Ambassador” Conference, organized on February 20, 2020 at the Șuțu Palace by the Bucharest Municipality Museum. We will always remember the special book dedication written by His Excellency Alfred H. Moses as the expression of friendly connection: “To Theodor, my friend, world class economist, with high regards, Alfred” (Source: http://holisticmarketingmanagement.ro/his-excellency-alfred-h-moses-romania-progressingfrom-darkness-to-light/).

● Costel NEGRICEA, Rector of the Romanian-American University received a “Carol Davila” U.M.F. Bucharest distinction Note from the Editor-in-Chief Prof. Dr. Costel Negricea, Rector of the Romanian-American University, is an Honorary Member and Member of the Board of the scientific association Romanian Distribution Committee. “Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine” was born from the collaboration of the Romanian Distribution Committee, the “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Bucharest and the RomanianAmerican University. The Romanian-American University got involved together with the “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Bucharest and Romanian Distribution Committee in the creation and organization of the “SANABUNA” Congress: “Health, Nutrition, Fitness and Wellbeing”.

Costel NEGRICEA, Rector of the Romanian-American University has received a “Carol Davila” U.M.F. Bucharest distinction

Knowledge, experience, and emotions are factors in effective decision-making via the depth of thought, meaningful and memorable messages and actions, as well as the promotion of further advancement. It is also said that an event can be a good lesson if people can experience it as a community looking for solutions and inspiration, life being a learning process. Friday 14, January 2022 the beautiful and historical Council Hall of the Faculty of Medicine, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Bucharest (UMF), hosted a significant event. In this context, the distinguished Prof. Dr. Viorel Jinga, Rector of the “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Bucharest (UMF), expressed best birthday wishes to Prof. Dr. Costel Negricea, Rector of the Romanian-American University. On this special occasion, Prof. Dr. Costel Negricea, Rector of the Romanian-American University, has received a “Carol Davila” U.M.F. Bucharest distinction. As it is known: • Prof. Dr. Costel Negricea, Rector of the Romanian-American University ensured agile adaptation of the Romanian-American University to developments specific to the pandemic context (http://holisticmarketingmanagement.ro/leadership-in-era-digitala-arhitectura-culturalaprin-marketing-digital-costel-negricea/); • The Romanian-American University got involved together with the “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Bucharest and Romanian Distribution Committee in the creation and organization of the “SANABUNA” Congress: “Health, Nutrition, Fitness and Wellbeing”;

• Prof. Dr. Costel Negricea, Rector of the Romanian-American University, is an Honorary Member and Member of the Board of the scientific association Romanian Distribution Committee; • “Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine” was born from the collaboration of the Romanian Distribution Committee, the “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Bucharest and the Romanian-American University.