Marcelo Somers wrote a good article arguing that to compete with the likes of Amazon, e-commerce companies need to focus on telling stories through the products they sell. From Disrupting Amazon: Rethinking eCommerce:

An eCommerce site should be about more than just selling stuff. It should embody a set of values that are distilled in how the product looks, how it feels, and what it contains. It should have an opinion – the story is how we go about telling it through our interface, how we merchandise, the photography, and the products on the site.

He also provides some examples of companies that do this well.

Related post from the Elezea archive: The welcome shift to context-based e-commerce.