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U-commerce is an emerging paradigm transcending traditional e-commerce boundaries. The purpose of this paper is to highlight those issues that deserve attention in developing successful u-commerce models.

The interpretive structural model technique is adopted to construct a hierarchical structure, and the impact matrix cross-reference multiplication applied to a classification (MIC-MAC) approach is employed to analyze the effect and dependence among these factors.

The research shows that there exists a group of enablers having a high driving power and low dependence requiring maximum attention and of strategic importance, while another group consists of those variables that have high dependence and are the resultant actions.

Organizations that plans to develop a u-commerce model would be benefited from this study. They can understand the difference between the independent and dependent variables and their mutual relationships. This would help them to prioritize their budget and implement suitable strategies to cater to key variables so as to exploit the benefits of u-commerce.

Most of the GCC countries have very similar business environment. This research can easily be adapted to other GCC nations thereby saving the duplication of time, efforts and money.

This research was conducted in a developing economy in a GCC country which is very fast adopter of new technology. The findings of this study would serve as a guide to the businesses who are migrating to a u-commerce model in future.

Ubiquitous commerce or u‐commerce is the combination of traditional e‐commerce and wireless, television, voice and silent commerce. U‐commerce implies ubiquity, universality, uniqueness and unison. It is not a replacement for other types of commerce, but an extension of them. While bringing many benefits, there are challenges and impediments to overcome. Research is needed to assess the value of u‐commerce and to address its related issues and challenges. Questions that need to be addressed are: What is the value of u‐commerce? What are the ways to maximize the benefits and value of u‐commerce? Is it the right technology and what directions need to be considered? What are the privacy issues and risks involved? What about trust and security? What are the strategies for businesses in utilizing and implementing u‐commerce? The research issues presented in this article will help create a better understanding of u‐commerce and prepare us for challenges facing it.

This paper aims to investigate processes of how RFID‐enabled systems affect consumers' trust and acceptance of u‐commerce, emphasizing a feedback loop where consumers' post‐transaction trust affects their initial trust.

A simulation model using system dynamics (SD) is developed to show the importance of trust issues involving RFID technology, decomposing complex processes of trust building in u‐commerce into a set of feedback loops with a causal‐loop diagram.

The results of simulation runs indicate that well‐established policies, especially for current privacy issues, should be in place to increase consumers' acceptance of u‐commerce.

The research provides insights into the development of RFID‐based consumers' trust in u‐commerce, and policies to increase consumers' trust in u‐commerce. The research model was developed and verified using SD.

Taking into account the importance of e‐commerce and the current applications of AI techniques in this area, this research aims to adequate the design of a multi‐agent system for the provisioning of e‐services in u‐commerce environments. This proposal is centred on the methods of evaluation in a u‐e‐commerce environment.

The multi‐agent systems (MAS) approach is based on an MAS model developed for AmI that has been redesigned to support u‐commerce. The use of a recommendation system, previously developed by the research group, is suggested for this MAS. The methodological proposal centres on the evaluation of this type of system.

The evaluation of this type of system is the principal problem of current research. Therefore, this is the main contribution of the paper.

The different evaluation methods that are proposed, whether qualitative or quantitative, offer the possibility of measuring the added value that the context can give to the use of e‐services in different domains of application. Qualitative evaluation should consider the customer as a central piece in the system. In addition, quantitative methods should objectively evaluate the contribution of context to the application.

At present, there is no single method for evaluating the benefits of different u‐commerce systems, so a new method needs to be found based on these techniques.

The research proposes an MAS designed for u‐commerce domains, analyzes the capacity of trust management techniques in this environment, and proposes several evaluation methods to show the benefits of context information in the use of e‐services. Several real developments are described to show the different applications of MAS in u‐commerce and how evaluation is carried out.

This study aims to expand the understanding of the implicit exposure of brands in Web dramas with congruent branding messages shared on social media Moments. This study also aims to examine the mediating role of word of mouth (WOM) and brand love in the relationship between Web-drama connectedness and viewers’ intention to spend and spending per week.

A total of 657 usable questionnaires were gathered from Chinese participants who watch the famous weekly drama “My Huckleberry Friends” and make weekly purchases from McDonald’s. Partial least squares regression was used to test the theoretical model of the study.

Results of this study reveal that WOM and brand love mediate the relationship between Web-drama connectedness and intention to spend on the exposed brand. Intention to spend mediates the relationship between brand love and spending. WOM mediates the relationship between Web-drama connectedness and spending.

Tencent’s WeChat is a well-known Chinese social media platform with a history of forbidding advertising. Users constantly flood social media with Web-drama content, influencing consumers’ spending habits. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is one of the first attempts to develop an understanding of Web-drama connectedness, brand love, WOM and behavioural intention by tracing the spending on advertised brands. This study highlights how brands maintain consumer spending by enhancing brand love via Web-drama advertising and instigating ticklish moments as “print screens” of WOM on social media.

The authors seek to propose the notion of ubiquitous proximity e‐service for exploring collective wisdom in the ubiquitous environment. Ubiquitous proximity e‐service highlights the collective effort focused on collecting the user group's power as the reference for ubiquitous trust decisions.

This paper provides some theoretical utility support for ubiquitous proximity e‐service. The “homophily” describes the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others. By highlighting the “homophily” of e‐service participants, these isolated individuals can be treated as a group with proximity. The main value of ubiquitous proximity e‐service utilizes the network effect from the collective effort of interpersonal social network.

In order to leap the trust barrier for users to embrace these ubiquitous e‐services, ubiquitous proximity e‐service makes it possible for users to collaborate with their nearby user groups to establish a reliable and trustworthy interaction environment. The simulation outcomes for trust decision quality enhancement show a significant improvement in a variety of environment settings.

A significant value of ubiquitous proximity e‐service lies in the increased possibility of establishing innovative social network relationships. From the interpersonal perspective, unfamiliar strangers can make connections with individuals who are proximal and homoplastic to them. The strength of proximity gives people better chances to make interpersonal connections, including both weak ties and strong ties. By combining those interpersonal tie relationships, ubiquitous proximity e‐service can easily cause information diffusion and effectively encourage collective wisdom.

The paper advocates the utility of ubiquitous proximity e‐service that can be realized in the e‐commerce environment and which enables information diffusion effectively.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the state of readiness of large UK based retailing companies for the introduction of ubiquitous computing (U‐computing) retailing applications.

A questionnaire was distributed to a sampling frame of large British retailers, leading to 255 responses. The document contained items concerning, inter alia, a firm's level of preparedness, managerial attitudes towards and support for U‐computing applications, strategic fit and pre‐existing IT capacities.

A third of the respondents reported the existence of a “good fit” between U‐computing retail applications and their companies' products, activities and core competencies. However, only 20 per cent of the sample appeared to be well‐prepared for the introduction of U‐computing. There was little evidence of the sample enterprises adopting strategic approaches to implementation.

Only a minority of the firms in the sampling frame participated in the research and the sample size was modest. Data were self‐reported and only a single country was considered. The study concerned just large businesses.

The outcomes suggest a widespread “wait and see” approach towards U‐computing among the sample businesses and a distinct lack of strategic thinking regarding implementation.

This is the first empirical study to explore the prospective introduction to British retailing of a new technology that possesses the potential to revolutionise the operations of UK retailing firms.

In this chapter, the authors undertake a systematic review of the literature to identify research exploring the use of new information and communication technologies (ICT). New ICT include the use of the Internet, mobile communications, and social technologies. The authors find that while interest in the area is increasing, especially among marketing and information systems scholars, there seems to be far less research interest among international business (IB) and strategy scholars. This chapter provides a summary of the research that has been done and discusses some potential future research areas that IB and strategy researchers might wish to pursue. Among these projects are investigating the use of ICT as a tool to aid the internationalization process, improve location choice and entry mode decisions, and identify and create a sustainable competitive advantage. The use of ICT in business is pervasive; As research scholars, we need to build these technologies into our theories and research to help managers determine what works and where certain technologies can help create better performing firms.