The power of “Long Tail”

What is “Long Tail” really mean?

According to the book of Chris Anderson, Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits”.

People always focus on the best selling products of the brick-and-mortar retail business. In the long tail, it shows the potential of the niche market. No matter what it is, there is always a specific market needs.

For example, people used to buy a book in a bookstore. But now people prefer to buy a book online (Amazon). When it has the global network, it really helps to develop the niche market (long tail).  In a bookstore, it has cost to rent a store and limited space, it leads to people have limited choice and not much recommend, it narrows the buyer consumption behavior. In Amazon, the amount of book is countless. Since they are an online store, so the cost is much lower and the book market is even larger, although only 20% of the book is “hits”, doesn’t mean the 80% has no market for the people. There is still a value of the specific market needs. In the attention economy stated that when copies are abundant, they become worthless and stuff that can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable. So people are willing to find something that are scarece and valuable but not just popular for the public.

Since we have the global network and search engine, it is easy for us to search and find out what else do we like. People can not just focus on the buying trends in a book store but in worldwide. It has rich niche content in online, if I want to but a book that not popular in Hong Kong or even it doesn’t publish in Hong Kong, I can still buy in online from a different country. This is the power of Long Tail. It always have a market for everyone.

-Tammy

Reference:

1. Anderson, C. (2006). The long tail ;why the future of business is selling less of more. New York: Hyperion.