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.
V viewpoints illustration by yareK WasZul T hroUgh Three CenTUries of industrialization, humans have changed the chemical composition of the air, land, rivers, and oceans. The essentials of life for the majority of the Earth's flora and fauna have experienced profound alterations, and these species-threatening transformations show signs of accelerating unless we take action to change direction. Many of the proposed solutions, such as carbon sequestering, have an engineering orientation and are based on current technologies. 7 Often the suggested remedies do not adequately recognize the potential of information systems to greatly increase energy efficiency 12 or to influence individual and organizational behaviors. This is a critical oversight. Computer-based information systems have been the driving force for productivity improvements 10 in the last five decades. We contend that, in a similar way, information systems can be a driving force for sustainability improvements. Our quest for environmental sustainability needs an information strategy to parallel and complement engineering solutions: ACM members could and should play a critical role in creating and implementing an information strategy.Computing professionals and academics have many of the key skills needed to help solve the complex problems surrounding sustainability. This community is highly innovative, focused on efficiency gains and the customer experience, and has extensive knowledge of the design and implementation of systems. In this column, we want to stimulate the computing profession to address environmental sustainability collectively through action and research focusing on several imperatives at the heart of an information strategy. These imperatives arise from two views about human behavior-rational and social-
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.