WebProNews

Online retailers would love to think outside the box, but the box is pretty high and wide...you can't mention your website on ebay, when you come up in a search, Ebay having copied Amazon recently shows that there is a 1cent copy available of what you're selling, gee how innovative is it to lower sellers profit margins even more, while touting 1cent sellers who (when they are new) gleefully pay 40cent an item to make no profit...
And the fact that buyers at ebay buy less than traditional retail is one of the worst sticking points about on line selling. I ran a retail music store where we had autograph parties from bands, live performances, new release showings, played things for people that interested them, threw a party with music stars free once a year to say thanks to customer, and generally knew customers by name...match that online if you can.
Perhaps if you have a huge staff with an unlimited budget you could simulate it. but a one or two person operation, while able to do this in person, cannot in the world of one keystroke at a time.
Innovation, seems to be to me, in the online world a kind of oxymoron, take what happens in retail, copy it, dumb it down, lower the sellers' profit margin, raise your selling fees and there you go...a great environment for ebay, and no one else in particular...what's innovative about that, and how does one innovate about going backwards???