If it were me I would be writing about the DIFFERENCES between physical world shops and online shops, how the high street is losing the fight against the online markets and how you predict they will evolve and integrate the Internet into their business model.
This would address the entire spectrum of e-commerce and give you plenty of scope to diversify your argument. Given the online markets are led by big business (who have big budgets) and consumers, but the small trader can now compete in this playing field, it follws big business will begin to react to the current threats and respond with new ways to cut costs, integrate their online shops, improve warehousing etc.
One typical example would be where the online shops move 90% toward an internet only store and all transactions are processed online. The high street stores would become more of a showroom so people still have the tactile presence of a product, but the actual back-end processes are more warehouse based. This would reduce costs because there is less stock to carry, less stock to distibute around to stores and the delivery processes become centralised. Also, collection of user data is better managed from the internet and this means marketing is more specific.
As you can see, there are many ways you can direct your investigation and predicting the future trends can be really good fun. It is also a unique approach and would probably guarantee a high mark for its originality.
Remember me when you get the top marks and the ensuing top job. I may need a job myself one day LOL
