With the proliferation of the internet and mobile technology in the past two decades (Chen et al. 2002), online markets and platforms have experienced exponential growth and become a cornerstone of modern commerce, transforming how businesses operate and how consumers engage with products and services (Phan and Vogel 2010). The development of the online market attracted significant attention from academia.
Meanwhile, driven by advances in models (including machine learning, deep learning, and large models) and computational power, artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force, reshaping organizations and innovations (Fügener et al. 2021; Lee et al. 2023). The importance of AI goes beyond the improvement in operational performance, such as in personalization, recommendation, and data processing, and lies in the potential to solve complex problems with significant impacts (Wei et al. 2025). The term “transformative AI” was coined to refer to such potential of AI to change society, economy, or even humans (Banafa 2023; Trammell and Korinek 2023; Wessel et al. 2025).
In particular, we posit that AI will bring transformative power to revolutionize the online market — a foundation of the digital economy. As AI technologies continue to evolve, they promise to unlock new opportunities, foster innovation, and address global challenges (Mikalef and Gupta 2021). With AI’s further integration into online markets, it may create a more dynamic, efficient, and customer-centric digital shopping experience (Deng et al. 2023; Rai et al. 2019; Wang et al. 2025).
In light of this potential, this special issue invites efforts from information systems scholars to study the design, use, impact, and management of AI that may transform online markets for exchanging products, services, innovations, and algorithms, among other things. This special issue encourages research using technical, empirical, or behavioral methods performed at individual, group, organizational, or societal levels. We particularly welcome the studies that can bring insights into the future of AI in online markets.