1) My goodness, there are competitors that I deal with that are mainly Ecommerce looking sites/ Amazon store websites and they do well.

2) Why not? The only thing is I avoid having articles saying "I LOVE THIS product" when I don't even have it.

But I've shifted my business to where I do buy the product and do full on video and what not with me having the product.

3) I don't touch that but it doesn't hurt . I just focus on high PR contextual backlinks.

I agree. Amazon store sites do well. I would suggest that you write reviews and link to amazon products with your links. I have owned several of these sites and they do quite well.

I prefer Amazon review sites over ecommerce like amazon stores. In my opinion they are easier to rank in Google.

I have not use it before, i cant really tell.

I too was thinking about this also and found the above information really helpful, in the past I have had the amazon products ads on my web site and did ok

What most of us do is a re-write of the opinions of others about tje product at Amazon, as this is not illegal. However, you need to understand that directory submissions are just one part of the link building process and you need to ne aware of this fact.

Thank you everybody

By "Amazon store" do you mean just a store without original content? They don't do well via SEO organic traffic unless you add original content to them.

Directory submission, i've heard it's only worth submitting to high PR niche related directories. Mass submitting to low PR directories won't improve your ranking and may even worsen it.