The Long Tail

Description:

In THE LONG TAIL, business journalist Chris Anderson examines the revolution in the online world, identifying key trends that affect the way people sell and shop. THE LONG TAIL is an expansion and a rethinking of Anderson?s widely circulated 2004 Wired magazine article in which he highlighted the importance of niche markets in the new economy; his ideas are grounded in economics, mathematics, distribution curves, and marketing. Using graphs, Anderson illustrates the phrase "the long tail," which refers to products that, in the old economy, did not sell in large quantities, and thus did not merit space on the very limited shelves of brick-and-mortar stores; the blockbusters, or "hits," which made profits and were restocked, fall into the "short head" of the graph. Anderson explains how and why, using virtual inventories, e-commerce sites can exploit the "long tail," by recognizing niches--small pockets of high interest--since, as he says in his subtitle, selling less of more things can be profitable. Anderson shows this to be true by means of examples drawn from the fast-evolving music and entertainment sectors. Essential to all of this are more sophisticated search engines--including Google--and "aggregators," companies that assemble and organize information about products so that companies can sell further down the long tail. Anderson also sees a trend toward the greater use of filters and recommendations, including sites, such as Daily Candy, that do nothing but advise shoppers about what to buy. Anderson shows how enormous profits are being made by companies such as eBay, Netflix, Rhapsody, and others whose virtual inventories offer a selection of products many times greater than brick-and-mortar stores--independent videos, for example, versus Hollywood blockbusters. In THE LONG TAIL, it all comes down to "hits" and "niches."

Portions copyright 2005 Muze Inc. All rights reserved.

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