One Day, Ten Tracks, One Shared Question: My Recap of ISPC 2026

This ISPC 2026 recap picks up right where the E-Commerce Best Practice Day left off. Friday continued seamlessly. ISPC 2026 took place at FHNW in Brugg-Windisch, with ten parallel scientific tracks. The audience came from all over the world.

ISPC 2026 Opening: Numbers That Speak for Themselves

Richard Geibel opened the conference. He thanked the local organizing team: Darius Zumstein, Adele Dörner, and Anouk Hodel. He also shared a few numbers that show the conference’s growth: 264 authors, 52 universities, 22 countries, 5 continents. From Georgia to Malaysia and Indonesia, all the way to Switzerland, hardly a region was left unrepresented.

I was especially struck by Richard’s look into “Strategy 2030.” It rests on three principles:

1. Better Researchers – With 100 presentations, classic peer review alone no longer cuts it. So an AI-enabled review system now delivers detailed feedback, sometimes 6 to 10 pages long. After all, authors should actually learn something, not just receive a verdict.
2. Better Research Community – The purely annual conference is meant to become a real community. A dedicated platform is already in the works.
3. Shape the Future of Digital & AI Management – This is the shared focus running through all ten tracks.

Track 10 in This ISPC 2026 Recap: Digital Health, Trust & Societal AI

I had the chance to co-moderate this track together with Richard. It shows just how broadly “Digital Health” is being thought about these days. These contributions stuck with me most:

• Patricia Girrbach (IU) opened with a leadership model for digital transformation. Her finding: sustainable success depends not just on technology, but on leadership that builds psychological safety.
• Tamar Charkviani (Caucasus University, Georgia) examined digital trust and civic participation in the age of AI. Using Georgia as an example, she showed how closely technology trust and democratic resilience are linked.
• No fewer than three contributions involving Siavash Hosseinpour Chermahini looked at healthcare digitalization from different angles. They covered ethical challenges, telemedicine, and the opportunities and risks around data privacy.
• Halimah Mohd Yusof and Roya Anvari focused on the organizational side. They showed how AI changes teamwork, leadership, and workplace culture. Change management matters at least as much as the technology itself.
• Social commerce made an appearance too: Meriem Nejjar and Hanaa El Bayed Sakalli showed how TikTok and Instagram drive impulsive purchases among young Moroccan consumers. It was a nice bridge back to the previous day.

Track 3 in This ISPC 2026 Recap: Digital Consumer Experience, Retail & Marketing

Over in Track 3 (moderated by Alina Holle and Christian Pangaribuan), I picked up plenty as well:

• Several contributions from Indonesia examined how strongly influencers and fan communities drive Gen Z purchase decisions. One example is the “Credibility-Purchase Disconnect”: credibility builds parasocial attachment, but it isn’t what drives the purchase. Instead, emotional closeness, the so-called “Bestie Effect,” decides.
• Devi Shonia, Davit Ugrelidze, and Luka Nadirashvili presented a framework that positions marketing as the engine of “behavioral activation” in smart cities. After all, data only creates value once it actually changes behavior.
• There was also a reunion with a topic from the day before: Celine Alter and Lisa Lüthy presented their study on hologram shopping assistants at LOEB. It’s the very same “EMILIA” that Martin Stucki had shown live the day before. Their study adds the scientific deep dive: trust builds through accuracy, but drops quickly after wrong answers. Customers value simple, practical use cases most, such as orientation or product information.

My Takeaway for This ISPC 2026 Recap

Whether it was leadership in care, digital trust in Georgia, or hologram assistants at LOEB, almost every talk came back to the same question. How do we build trust in systems increasingly shaped by AI? And where does the human still need to stay in the loop?

It was an all-around enriching day with an impressively international community. For more on the day before, check out my post on the E-Commerce Best Practice Day and my update on the CIP project. I’m already looking forward to ISPC 2027.