Kim McNeely
The long tail is a business strategy that allows consumers to find pretty much whatever they want, whenever they want. It is based on the idea of having more than just the top ranked items in stock but also having those items that are hard to find due to their lack in popularity. Companies like Amazon.com and iTunes have allowed consumers to go online and find exactly what they want, whether it be a popular product at the time, or something else. iTunes even allows a consumer to purchase the single alone in stead of having to buy the entire CD. The long tail strategy makes it possible for online business to sell products that actual stores, for example Walmart, don’t have the capacity to sell. Walmart must sell a certain number of copies of a certain CD to be able to afford the space that that one CD takes up on the shelves. Online companies do not have to worry about inventory size and keeping up with the consumers demand in order to pay for the space that that item is taking up.
The long tail strategy is beneficial for the consumer as well as the company. The online company will save money by not having to rent space to sell their products. The consumer benefits because he or she has the ability to find whatever they want with little effort. Companies that sell more than just the “hits” or the top ranked items will attract a larger audience and make more profit. The long tail strategy has been a success due to the more broad options it offers to the consumers.
Alex Zabel
The long tale is getting in touch with the whole market rather than just the main market. The article stated that in a jukebox the songs that most people choose aren't the hit songs, it's the misses that make the money because there are so many of them. The idea of the long tale is that you must target everyone, and not just the main market. There are more people combined in these smaller markets than there are in the larger market. The companies that can allow people to find exactly what they want will profit the most. Amazon and ITunes are the best example because they allow you to choose exactly what you want and purchase it easily. Rhapsody finds someone to listen to each of their top 100,000 songs each month. They offer over 735,000 songs. This helps them reach the widest group of customers possible.
The long tale is a great way for any company to widen their customer base as well as increase their number of customers. Just going after a main market leaves so many potential customers within reach but not satisfied. While it doesn't work with every market it can be a great strategy to gain customers.
Justin Blackburn
Till the last century retailers have mostly been concerned with ‘Big Hits’ of the music, video, and book markets as opposed to the thousands of other no-name artists that are more niche oriented. For example, most brick and mortar stores will not carry a huge selection of documentaries because the amount of people looking to rent or buy this niche of products, in a certain geographic area, is too limited to justify the physical space for the product. This ‘Hit-driven economics’ is greatly fueled because the costs of carrying a product rarely outweigh the benefits.
Now online retailers are discovering that a majority of the total products that people want to buy are not actually top hits. Majority of online sales can be made up of the sum of many small purchases per niche. This is the Long Tail market. You can find thousands of practically undiscovered bands, books, and movies that many people will enjoy but don’t make a sizeable enough market to justify them in a Barnes & Noble store.
Online retailers can take advantage of this because they have (almost) unlimited storage space to put the millions of niche products. This is a huge profit margin that even oversees the market for Big Hits.
In the last two pages of his article, Chris Anderson describes three rules that utilizes the power of the Long Tail; 1) Make everything available. 2) Cut the price in half, now lower it. 3) Help me find it.
What stuck out in my mind was a quote from the second page, “Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability. Now everyone can easily enjoy products that have only a minuet niche in the market. This will allow diversity to grow as consumers are able to find a great variety that appeals to them specifically. Products no longer must be mainstream to be able to be recognized.
13 comments:
click only and click and mortar difer very much from mortar only with the long tale. I think this is the importance here because the click allows the mortar to operate in a different space, a space where the rules of the mortar no longer apply. Even though this is true new businesses cannot let the click wave [the internet as a business platform] affect their customer base like it happened with mp3.com. Therefore business applying the long tale to their customers must hand walk them to a certain point and then let go of their hand so that the customer can enjoy the varied fruits in the garden of mass varieties that is the long tale.
I have used Amazon extensively for music, books, and movies, and have found the "Customers who bought this, also like..." extremely helpful. This is one of the best ways to get stuff you like that is not mainstream, and it is really cool that companies have started doing that. I had no idea that this idea was called "The Long Tail", and I was unaware that so many of the non-hits were actually more profitable than the hits because of the sheer number of non-hits, and online retailers are able to provide services for these non-hits. I love how people have been moving further away from the mainstream because it has gotten so boring, and the Long Tail is a great article about these innovations.
I grew up in a time, and geographical location, where there weren't even large department stores available to shop at. We shopped almost exclusively at Mom & Pop stores. In comparison to those times, the availability of goods and services on the internet sometimes seems overwhelming to me. Reading about how the Long Tail works helps enlighten my view of why there are so many choices on the internet. It makes sense now.
Max Schoenrock- I really enjoyed this article. The long tail is a great strategy for online businesses to meet both the company’s satisfaction and the consumer’s needs. Being an itunes customer, I have experienced first hand how the long tail strategy works. There is always that one song that I like for which I can’t find the CD for at the local Target. The advantage itunes has over Target is that it has that CD, and if I only want that one song, it gives me the option to download just that song without having to buy the whole CD. Because of this long tail advantage, I wouldn’t use anything else but itunes. This is a great business strategy for which company’s can make better profits.
Sara Supple- I also really liked the Long Tail article, for it's clarity of explaining the whole concept behind the idea. I thought it was really interesting how the beginning of the Long Tail actually informed consumers of what their own tastes really were, as he quoted: "As they wander further from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a lack of alternatives, and a hit-driven culture)." Having been a customer of both Amazon and iTunes, I can also relate with a majority of the article about the long tail aspects of both businesses. While I have some 'hits' from iTunes on my iPod, a majority of my music is from artists most people have never even heard of, the 'misses'- and it's usually a lot better then the hits.
This idea is very exciting to me. I am glad that online companies have been able to give us the choice of what we buy. I always get frustrated when it feels like you are being told what to like. Now with online companies ability cheaply place many titles of different media's online the choice is mine again. I found it interesting when the article talked about limited shelf space as a constraint for how much can be sold. Now with online sites the storage space is practically endless. I think of my music collection as a parallel. With the cost of hard drives today it is very cheap to get more memory. I never delete any music, even if I never listen to it is still easier to add more memory if i need it.
Robert Clausen
The long tail is great for both business and consumers. The ability to purchase such a wide variety of movies, DVDs, and books means that almost everyone is making up the market for these online companies.
Craig Sugiyama- this has been the most interesting article I have read this year. The idea of the long tail through the internet can be considered a revolution as far as convenience for every person in the world. The idea of catering to every little market in a big market allows for no one to be "left out" when it comes to their purchases. The biggest advantage that these companies have is they are able to customize themselves to their customers so much easier. I see places like blockbuster and CD stores going out of business within next years and everything being put into online businesses.
I didnt even know what i really wanted. the point is this: what is popular has become pupular because of economics of scarcity. so few products hit the shelf and are 'valued' because there inherint value is in the products ability to turn a profit. The long tail describes a situation where half or more than half of a market exists outside of what retailers can supply. meaning there is alot of money in all types of entertainemntt that arent considered popular. If a firm can bring all options to all market segments they are going to make big money. and since the onliune world has the ability to cut costs as never before, reaching untapped market segments with new (old) mediums has become possible.,
When i read about 80:20 rules it was just saying about 20. However, this article is saying that 80 is also important, and I didn't know that but I agree with this.
Also, the three rules are also interesting. But "free has a cost" was more than that. Because i've never thought free will also charge.
This is certainally one of the core concepts in inernet marketing today. The key is hitting and accessing as many of these little niches as posible. 10 people world wide may be interested in a Dwight Shrup bobble head, but if you get those 10, along w/ a thousand other tiny sites, you are on your way to making millions. I guess the key to this is accessing, and finding the niches. Pretty interesting stuff!
-Brando
I have not purchased a song from a music store in a long time. The songs were overpriced and did not match my song selection exactly. I then went onto illegal downloading which many others have done as well. However with the ease of downloading the songs I want for the price I want I may return to downloading songs off of iTunes and Rhapsody along with many others I assume.
Darcy Crowell: I actually like having the long tail process when shopping online because I think that is a good way to see other items that arent so popular, that still can appeal to you. You can make it popular, or even better, no one else will have that item making you special.
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