In my usual daily hunting around the net, I found a blog posting about a recent set of Gartner reports on vCommerce:
By 2010, 20 percent of global Tier 1 retailers will have a marketing presence in online games and virtual worlds. […] These virtual worlds and video games are emerging as places where consumers can shop and retailers need to be ready to respond to this growing demand.
Both the Gartner research and the general information in the Otherland Group Blog will be of interest to those following the evolution of the Parallel World!