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agement of these brands is idiosyncratic and shrouded in mystery. In this article, we seek to address these problems. Drawing on the works of philosophers such as Popper, Heidegger, and Whitehead, we dimensionalize, define, and differentiate luxury brands. Conceptualizing Luxury BrandsA review of the literature reveals a paucity of definitions of what constitutes a luxury brand. Researchers and authors tend to leave the definition implicit. 3 The concept of luxury and the corollary of the luxury brand are contentious. Some consider them to be socially divisive. For example, Veblen argued that people used the conspicuous consumption of luxury goods to signal wealth, power, and status. 4 Sekora echoing Veblen contends, "the concept of luxury is one of the oldest, most important, and most pervasive negative principles for organizing society Western history has known." 5 Others view luxury as a tonic for our humdrum world. Twitchell argues for the "trickle down" effect of luxury: products and services that are considered luxury in one generation become a common staple in the next. 6 Luxury is one of the drivers of growth in free markets, for people aspire to the luxurious.

This article introduces several new concepts that lay the conceptual foundation for thinking about next-generation marketing based on ubiquitous networks. U-commerce, orÜber-commerce, is predicated on the characteristics of networkubiquity, universality, uniqueness, and unison. It is proposed that the keys to managing network-driven firms are the concepts of u-space and attention analysis. The implications for next-generation marketing in the u-space are explored, with a research agenda identified for scholars and managerial implications recognized for practitioners.