E-books are surging in popularity. As this important phenomenon continues, it will only serve to have a detrimental effect upon the High St chains that are left..Waterstones in the UK or Barnes & Noble in the US.

Perhaps the only way forward is to take the competition on at its own game. And this is what Barnes & Noble are doing with the introduction of their own tablet, the Nook.

Without High St book chains, the publishers’ marketing proposition crumbles. The idea that publishers can spot, mold and publicize new talent, then get someone to buy books at prices that actually makes economic sense, suddenly seems out of reach. They stand as gatekeepers to quality if you like, as there is the subconscious acceptance in most of us that because it has made it on to the shelf in Waterstones, then it must be good. The internet allows us all to be self-published with no-one stopping to see if our work is of any real value.

What publishers count on from bookstores is the browsing effect. Surveys indicate that only a third of the people who step into a book shop and walk out with a book actually arrived with the specific desire to buy one.

But the problem is not so much now. People are warming to e-books, iPads and the like, but for the next but one generation of book lovers, they may have never read a book in paperback form! A scary thought!

The tablet market hotting up:

The latest product is the Kindle Fire. A direct competitor to the iPad. Albeit with a smaller screen and Wi-Fi connectivity only, I am sure this is nothing more than Amazon’s first shot across the Apple bow. The similarities between Amazon and Apple are obvious. Both have a huge collection of content that encompasses films, books and music. Customers of both companies can store content in the cloud and retrieve it from anywhere.

But price clearly differentiates the two. The Kindle Fire, due out in November, can be bought for just $199. The latest version of the Kindle e-reader, can be acquired for just $79. This gives a clear indication of Amazon’s strategy; recently enforced by the CEO: ” We are building premium products and offering them at non-premium prices.”

Great products, low prices:

Amazon’s unrivaled ability to drive down the price of everything it sells, is what gives them a colossal advantage. This is supported by a suite of innovative services to grateful customers.

Amazon has invested heavily in cloud computing, and their future success is, to an extent, contingent upon the success of the imminent tablet. If the tablet is popular, this will boost sales of Amazon’s cloud-based content, in the same way that the Kindle e-reader boosted sales of e-books.

Apple and Amazon squaring up to each other??

A price war between Apple and Amazon may be sparked. Apple made $7.3bn net profit in the latest quarter. Their profit margin is in excess of 20%, compared to Amazon’s 4%. On these figures, Apple could be the worst company in the world to pick a fight with! Should be an interesting tablet landscape unfolding in 2012!

The biggest UK success story so far is ASOS. Another notable success is Tesco, which generated over £2m in sales with Facebook vouchers for fans.

Give to receive:

Asos have over 540,000 followers as of this morning on Facebook. These have been acquired over the past 2 years or so. How? Through a committed and consistent strategy of providing interested parties with relevant content, special offers, insight into the fashion industry, and so on. Following on from this, followers are empowered to share all of this with their networks. They can contribute their own comments and be involved with the development of the brand too. These too “social” elements facilitate commercial transactions considerably.

Altered Attitudes required:

Not everyone is a big fan of f-commerce. In comparison to the potential of m-commerce for example, many are keen to point out that the potential market size is a mere drop in the ocean comparatively. For every success story, there are numerous failures.

But I think Facebook has it all. For a start, it is invariably where your customers are. Facebook has over 500m users; half of which log-on every day.

So perhaps companies need to show a little more patience with Facebook. Amazon and ebay were once “small businesses” with no real chance of making the grade, and changing our buying patterns. Facebook has a huge headstart over these two in terms of customer base, and selling features. ASOS gave people content to share over a long-period..it is only now they can start to turn this into a sales platform.

Loyalty and advocacy need to be nurtured. Thinking your product is great, and then simply telling people to buy it, will not grow your business in the social media space.

From the Facebook storefront, Old Spice aficionados – yes they now exist – can buy branded merchandise from the Super-Bowl-to-Real-Time-Social-Media ‘Old Spice Man’ campaign featuring shirtless baritone and ex-NFL player Isaiah Mustafa, replete with washboard ads and comedic timing.

As with the UK store, P&G has outsourced all the heavy lifting with the Old Spice Man Campaign Store – the Facebook store is simply a storefront linking through to an external e-store managed by a e-commerce partner in Massachusetts that looks after fulfillment and customer service.

So one of our predictions we make when speaking about the future of social commerce is no longer a prediction – the emergence of Facebook campaign stores to support and monetize marketing campaigns – pop-up f-stores – engage with the promotion; buy the merchandise.  The P&G Campaign store is elementary, and no doubt could be improved, but all the elements are there.  And it’s there. Welcome to the world of Facebook Campaign Stores.

Why do we think pop-up (temporary) Facebook Campaign Stores are the future of f-commerce?  They’re quick, cheap and easy to set up, they help monetize campaigns, and ultimately, because they may help solve the century-plus old problem encapsulated in the famous quote of disputed origin) origin “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”.

Whilst much advertising, including the digital variety, is and should be focused on building lifetime customer value (AKA ‘Brand building) rather than producing sales bumps, any integrated campaign that creates a digital trace between advertising and buyer behavior can only be a good thing.

So if you manage a brand, why not take a leaf from the book of the biggest advertisers in the world, and throw up a Facebook store for your next campaign?  And if you are an agency, why not consider teaming up with the burgeoning number of f-commerce solution providers out there and start proposing campaigns with real ROI?

The concept of “social” shopping / commerce has been circulating for a few years, but the idea has yet to reach critical mass. Given how intertwined the purchase consideration process and social media have become, it is surprising that social shopping / commerce still seems to be in its infancy. So, if we aren’t yet ready for social commerce, what do we expect as we use social media to support our purchase decisions?

We expect to be inspired (awareness) – the April launch of Facebook’s Universal Like button and social shopping sites like Kaboodle and Woot! enhance our awareness of brands, products and services we didn’t even realize we even wanted…or needed. They allow us to browse brands and products without being tied down to any one retailer and importantly, they give us a window into what our friends think are must haves.

We expect deals (engagement) – you may not be a coupon clipper, but it’s hard to say no to a good deal. Social media has proven itself to be an effective channel for finding and sharing deals, promotions and coupons. The lure of exclusivity has buoyed deal-a-day services and made them increasingly attractive to retailers, manufacturers and social media platforms (e.g. Twitter recently announced its @EarlyBird service which will share time-bound deals from participating advertisers, Amazon acquired deal-a-day site Woot! in June). In fact, the promise of exclusive deals tends to be a key motivator behind why consumers “like” brands on Facebook or follow them on Twitter.

We expect a megaphone (advocacy) – social media gives us a platform to talk about the brands we love and the ones we want to make sure our friends avoid. A happy customer is a brand’s best marketer.

We may be conditioned to click on deals through Facebook for, say, a TV, but we aren’t yet fully on board with making our purchases through social media platforms. How do you think social commerce will evolve and when do you think making transactions within social media will be commonplace? Will mobile be the catalyst?

On Tuesday Twitter unveiled its first foray into selling products.

The company announced @earlybird Exclusive Offers, which will be time-sensitive deals on products and events that will appear on the @earlybird Twitter account. People can follow that account to get access to the deals.

The idea borrows from private and limited-time sale sites, like Gilt, Groupon and Woot (which was  recently acquired by Amazon), a recent trend in online shopping. It also takes advantage of what companies like Dell, which attributes millions of dollars in sales to posting deals on Twitter, are already doing.

The deals could be on products, like iPods or nappies, or on events, like concert tickets or travel. In a post on a company blog, Twitter hinted that it could filter deals by category, like clothing  or gadgets, in the future. Twitter stressed that it would be selective about which deals were offered and “try and make these deals interesting and of value to you.”

The retailers will determine the price of the items and how many are available. Twitter will earn money from the sales. It is experimenting with different models, like a cut of each sale or a fixed price per deal, said Sean Garrett, a Twitter spokesman. The retailers will collect shoppers’ credit card numbers and otherwise fulfill the transaction.

This is a different approach to e-commerce than the one Twitter were potentially toying with last year, in which retailers could offer transactions on the site based on what people are writing about. A running shoe retailer, for example, could offer shoes to people who asked about the best shoes for running on trails. This might still be possible with annotations, a new service that Twitter says it is rolling out soon so that people can add so-called metadata, like a way to make a purchase, to Twitter posts.

The first deal will appear soon, Mr. Garrett said. They will initially be nationwide, but Twitter is considering offering deals specific to cities or countries later on. If @earlybird takes off, Twitter could become a competitor to Groupon and the many other local daily deal sites, as well as to Woot, Gilt and others.

Some executives are more optimistic. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, has said on several occasions that e-commerce will account for up to 15 percent by 2016. The major catalyst for e-commerce growth in the short term seems to be in stimulating existing online shoppers to continue to buy and to shift a greater percentage of their total purchases to the web.

To do this, companies will employee online marketing initiatives but also stress the convenience, broader selection, and ostensible cost savings associated with buying online. In the longer term, teenagers already spending online will acquire more purchasing power and independence and will invigorate the online channel.

More than half of online retailers believe that the outlook for the retail industry as a whole is gloomy and that retail sales will continue to slow in the coming 12 months. But 8o percent of online retailers said that they believe that the Web channel is better suited than other channels to withstand an extended economic downturn. (But more than half also think that multi-channel retailers are better suited to weather the economic turbulence than single-channel retailers).

E-commerce retailers report that their conversion rates continue to range from 3% to 3.5% as they have for years, which is another indication that the Web has not been as adversely impacted as other channels.

Going forward, online retailers will continue investing heavily in interactive marketing, a significant expenditure for e-commerce groups. In this vein, companies will experiment with social commerce initiatives, even though questions still remain for social marketing ROI, such as blogs and social networks.

Acquiring new customers is still the number one goal of online marketing efforts. While other retail channels struggle to innovate and perform, e-commerce managers have a unique opportunity to drive more sales and to test different tactics that resonate with consumers. Even more so now than in fatter times, retailers must strictly segment their customer groups and create messaging that speaks directly and powerfully to these groups.

US online sales of clothing, shoes and accessories increased 17% last year to $27bn. Growth in clothing is expected to outstrip other categories such as electronics over the next five years.

Amazon has recruited software engineers who are said to building “great new features to change the way people shop for clothing”.

Amazon’s push into fashion coincides with a drive by eBay, whose sales in clothing, shoes and accessories topped $5bn last year. eBay relaunched its clothing sales under the eBay Fashion brand in April, adding videos and comments from fashion stylists and a “find similar items” image-matching feature.

It has also launched a “fashion outlet” in the UK and created “storefronts” in the US with leading retailers selling excess and discounted stock directly to buyers.

Both Amazon and eBay clearly view this is a significant growth area; and are adopting site innovations normally deployed by more specialised clothing sites. Expanding viewing options such as zoom, multiple views and colour variation being some examples.

The success of “flash sale” sites such as Gilt, Hautelook and Rue La La, coupled with the consumer slump, has caused many retailers to revisit this market. Selling heavily discounted stock direct to consumers is on the up..so good news for us!

Many luxury groups have opted out of e-commerce altogether, believing the risks of selling online – such as brand degradation and counterfeiting – outweigh any benefits.

This whole notion of the web being a channel of discounting went against the very aesthetic of these brands.  But recent innovation has reshaped e-commerce. Luxury brands are discovering ways to reach customers without sacrificing brand integrity.

Applications on smartphones and the iPad have delivered a powerful interface for users to search, browse and buy goods. Ralph Lauren’s Rugby brand and Gap, among others, have developed their own sophisticated apps.

Indeed shopping is proving one of the most popular activities on touch devices. Sales through eBay’s iPhone app last year topped $500m. Purchases included a Lamborghini, and a Bentley.

All this shows that people are rapidly becoming used to the convenience of getting what they want, when they want it. Buyers are used to finding very expensive goods online. People are also confident enough to make big purchases without having to talk to a sales representative.

Luxury goods are among the most popular things consumers search for online, and a lot of it is their desire to know what’s going on with them, and their desire to own them. Yet meeting the demand and maintaining the luxury brand’s image was a perennial challenge.

Most high-end brands have established online sales through traditional channels, such as resellers and their own sites, and now they are gaining the confidence to venture out.

In addition to new applications, and private sales sites such as Gilt Groupe and Haute Look, one can also point to local deal sites such as Groupon and Living Social, and a new wave of companies that are bringing together location awareness, real-time inventory and deals, and social media.

It’s a huge period of innovation for consumer facing e-commerce. Customers are looking for curation, and social and mobile media are enabling real innovation and entrepreneurship today.

All of the panellists seemed to agree that Amazon will continue to reign supreme in “commodity commerce” but will not be able to lead in social commerce. More people are starting to crave relationships in shopping was their conclusion, and that Amazon will continue to monopolise the “boring old” way of shopping!

These relationships have captured the attention of millions of paying customers. Groupon is valued at $1.35 billion, while Gilt Groupe is expected to triple revenues this year.

Other industry giants are thinking through ways to horizontally integrate into the social commerce space. eBay is aggressively targeting the flash sales market, having recently launched the Fashion Vault. , a flash sales site that offers deep discounts on designer items.

While an acquisition may make perfect sense for a cash-rich company like Amazon (they have $5bn stashed away!) some will argue that they should continue to focus on scaling traditional online retail business. After all, revenues continue to rise as they continue to sell a ridiculous number of Kindles, and other products.  And they did recently acquire Zappos for $1.2bn.

For over a decade, Amazon and eBay have enjoyed the fruits of a market that required a greater focus on scale than on innovation. But the rise of Groupon, LivingSocial, Vente Privee, and other social commerce sites have taught us an undeniable truth that customers are ready for something different.

The question is whether Amazon will disrupt its own model in order to preserve its reign as King.