Ubiquitous commerce

Ubiquitous Commerce also known as U-Commerce, u commerce or uCommerce, refers to a variety of goods and/or services. Sometimes, it is used to refer to the wireless, continuous communication and exchange of data and information between and among retailers, customers, and systems (e.g., applications) regardless of location, devices used, or time of day.

Sometimes, U-Commerce describes the generic term for all-encompassing business transactions through or by means of information and communications technology. Ubiquitous commerce or uCommerce should not be confused with U.Commerce, which is a set of products and services offered by TouchNet Information Systems, Inc. and is a registered U.S. trademark (Reg. 4,069,063).

Core Concepts

According to Richard T. Watson the next generation of commerce referred to as Ubiquitous Commerce (or U-Commerce) includes four major features:

Areas

U-Commerce is described as the evolution of E-Commerce and M-Commerce also combining the areas of V-commerce, Television-Commerce (T-Commerce) as well as Silent-Commerce (S-Commerce).

Technologies

The origin and development of Ubiquitous Commerce is based on various information and communication technologies. These technologies were driving forces for the evolution to business transactions at any time and in any place and so they will be in the future.

Among them are the following examples:

  • Internet as the fundamental technology and source

In addition, there are also technologies regarding the concept of Ubiquitous Computing which are and will be the main driving forces for the Ubiquitous Commerce. These are mainly the following:

  • technologies of M2M communication, which include some of the technologies mentioned above
  • methods for the automatic identification and data capture (Auto-ID) e.g. GPS und RFID
  • in the future also smart and self-organizing devices/systems and the related technologies like sensors, AI

Opportunities and threats

In conjunction of the evolution of ubiquitous commerce in daily life and the approaching pervasiveness, a few opportunities as well as threats can be identified.

Opportunities:

  • individual advertising and also information supply e.g. based on location, time or mood of the customer
  • high availability of services
  • new potential revenue for supplier and accordingly new business models
  • advanced analysis alternatives for suppliers and customers (location, time, habit)
  • increasing mobility of customers and suppliers

Threats:

  • information privacy and threatening of mass surveillance
  • increasing requirements due to more diversity and quantity of devices and also energy consumption
  • Information overload and likely complexity - also Big Data
  • higher vulnerability to spoofing and security holes; e.g. as a result of more targets
  • rising exclusion of the elderly based on requirements of higher technical skills
  • "desocialization" of customer and supplier

See also

References

    This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, January 16, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.