“It’s a scary scenario. A few major players could take over Web 2.0,” said LeHong, suggesting that a merged entity such as a combined Google and Amazon.com could dominate as a “pretailer,” a product search and price comparison portal.” He calls this GOOGAZON.

The fear here is that such an entity would begin to dominate transactions to a level that they dictate terms to the retailers and business owners. Similar to how a Walmart store effects traditional retail stores in some markets it moves into. This type of entity could flex some big wallet marketing muscle to make sure they are the ones dicatating the terms of the new Web 2.0 Retail Market.

Personally while I agree that in theory this is all possible I have faith that many online business owners and marketers out there will not want to lose their ability to market and sell on line in whatever way they choose. I think that this type of relationship would attract an audience but there is still at least as many if not more consumers for whom the Web 2.0 Retail landscape means more choices, more information and they will want to have choices other than a Googazon type company. The most obvious choice for those consumers is going to be a retail blog and retail blog marketing program.

The retail blog will offer all the features of user input instantly updated information and user reviews that will increase loyalty and attract some of the best most qualified buyers on line. I talked to a company today with a retail blog that recieved 30,000 visitors in the last 3 days. Talk about increase in sales.

Retail Blog

A retail corporate blog can take many forms. An online retail company can use a retail blog as a blog marketing campaign to help increase site visits for potential customers searching for their products.

Writing in their blog about new products , or writing reviews about products that they carry is an easy way to build up content and brand a retail site as an authority in their retail space. I have seen some clients with retail sites get better results from a business blog than with years of optimization or ppc campaigns. A professional corporate blog in the retail space if properly optimized can improve search rankings and branding in the blogosphere.

Tommorow: Real Estate Blog