Trends in online retailing

So here's some recent articles that I came across (in no particular order):

• This one covers the position that TV production companies find themselves in. There is increasing interest in online video from consumers. There have been some successes with user generated content, but there are a bit hit and miss. While consumers are interested in original material, there simply isn't enough advertising revenue to pay TV production companies to produce the content. This interesting given my previous blog about advertising revenues. http://www.netimperative.com/news/2008/september/01/guest-comment-does-commercial-programming-have-a-1
• Some interesting data here on the trends in online shopping. No surprise that customer's expectations are increasing when it comes to Internet retailing. One of the major expectation is around the provision of easy to access product information. http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006568
• Continuing the riff around the power of consumer recommendations, this article contains some interesting data on the trend. When surveyed, 80% of consumers stated that reviews/recommendations played a significant part in their buying decisions. Plus sites with recommendations report 45% more traffic than those that don't. http://www.turnerinvestments.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/commentary.latest/commentary_section/Sector+Focus/CSID/387