After reading 'The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson; I noticed that there are many issues of online e-commerce that I never thought about before as a former business owner. For instance, how Mr. Anderson explained how one book called "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauner reserected a book that published a decade earlier with a similiar story line about mountain climbing disasters (www.wired.com/archive/12.10/tail_pr.html). Amazon.com was very keen with their marketing research and noticed if the book "Into Thin Air" was on the best selling list that they should bring back by Mr. Simpson's "Touching The Void"; in which became a best-seller too. Amazon, eBay, and many other online retailers use cookies that enable the companies to tell what their potential and existing customers niches or likes and dislikes of the products they sell; thus this is an economical way of bringing these products to the online market places. Online retailers have an advantage over brick and mortar stores because they do not have the same overhead and they can sell their products all over the world. Mr. Anderson also stated during his research that the Pureto's Principle statistical principle of the 80/20 rule states that for most retailing operations, that only 20% of the movies, videogames, and books will be the best or most popular items to sell (www.wired.com/archive/12.10/tail_pr.html). Well, Mr Anderson found out that this wasn't the case with most online retailers and the 98% rule was most applicable to the companies that he researched because even if one product sold in the product line-up that the graph would never reach zero on the tail end of the graph (Anderson, 2006 and 2008, pp. 6-7). Please see Chris Anderson's video describing the 80/20 rule at (http://www.youtube.com/watch?y=0Yku0GTrcuw&feature=fvw). Mr. Anderson describes the 98% rule that retailers' like Rhapsody online jukebox states that it sells that amount of its songs at least 4 or 5 times a month as "long-tailed distributions"; because the end of the line on the X axis is longer than the head of the Y axis (Anderson, 2006, 2008, pp. 10-11). Mr. Anderson also states there are three rules for this statistical graph: (1) the tail of the x axis is longer due to the infinite availability of products online; (2) it's cheaper to carry these niche items in databases and; (3) all the niches, when sold and added up, makes a larger market for both the consumer and the online retailers' (Anderson, 2006, 2008, pp. 10-11). This enables the online retailers to make more money compared to a brick and mortar store; and also helps consumers to find the products and services that they cannot find elsewhere.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Assignment I/ The Long Tail and issues of Cyberspace
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Suzanne,
ReplyDeleteGreat blog, really in depth. Thanks for the comments on mine,
I'll tell you, we have a pretty good silks selection at my store but, like you said, they're crap. No one ever buys them... and we buy the "nice" stuff, not the reeeeally bad silks like at Michaels. I wish I could've seen your work.
Thanks for posting your link in my blog, although, for some reason the "blog roll" won't recognize it. I'm trying to figure it out... hmmm.
Good job stating the relevant ideas behind the Long Tail. It would be nice to see more images to help the reader understand the concept. Images also help make articles easier to read and more compelling. I'd also like to see more analysis of what the Long Tail means in the real world. Some examples of how it applies to different businesses and organizations would also help. Also, rather than linking to the video of the 80/20 rule, it would be great to see it embedded into the story so that it would play directly in the post. That way the reader can watch the video, continue reading and have a better understanding about the story. Engaging the reader is very important.
ReplyDeleteDear Professor, I agree that I need to add more images and I did on the next assignment except for the streaming video. I am still trying to figure that one out, but, I will get that down hopefully very soon.
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