I-commerce, We-commerce, U-commerce

Oh, whatever next?

The boffins at the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change have been working hard on developing another new term for the already overloaded 'New Economy' lexicon. They've come up with 'u-commerce' as the next new strategic shift for ebusinesses. The 'u' stands for ubiquitous. They could simply have called it 'everywhere-commerce' except that would soon be abbreviated to ecommerce and for obvious reasons would make things even more confusing. In a report out yesterday, entitled The Future of Wireless: Different than You Think, Bolder than You Imagine, Accenture describes the defining characteristics of u-commerce as being an always on internet connection with platforms that connect seamlessly and are accessed via one single device that the user just can't live without. A million miles from the vision of m-commerce? Not really. Except Accenture argues three strategies will set the two apart. Companies will have to "engage the user's heart" and make the experience more "intimate"; make wireless devices "electronic wallets" so it's dead easy to spend and use locating technologies to work out when the customers in the right frame of mind to buy.