Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business is Selling Less of More,” tries to explain the progression of retail commerce at all levels from one that is driven by scarcity . –the few so-called “hits” or “best sellers”– to one that is driven by abundance and choice.
In Anderson’s view, all those nonhits, long obscured by the attention procured to the few -by comparison- best sellers, are now available to the public thanks to the Internet. And while their individual sales may never reach jaw-dropping levels, all their sales combined make up an important slice of the business pie.
It is my opinion that Anderson does an excellent job of sustaining this argument, all the while managing to remain didactic and not falling into pomposity or dense rhetoric. It is an interesting, sometimes even amusing –how many textbooks use the word “crappy “or make puns about the book’s title?– look at the way we used to get what we want and the way we do it now.
For starters, Anderson introduces the reader to why we view popular culture the way we do. The world of the blockbuster, he argues, nudged us into aiming our eyes –and our wallets– toward what the respective tastemakers of each industry considered to be hits, and thus worthy of said attention.
Then, Anderson argues that this culture of the hit as supreme ruler of our eyes, wallets and tastebuds — may be on its way out. The most watched TV shows today wouldn’t even break the top 10 in the 1970s, he says, and the top recording artists of all time mostly became so the same decade.
As means of an example, he points out that during the 1960s, one out of every eight cars driven in America was an Impala. One simple look at the highways and one may conclude that said dominance is impossible these days. There are plenty of SUVs and large pickups, -especially east of the Cascades– but we no longer are so unified in what we like, to watch, read, listen to, or drive. The chat around the watercooler, he states, is no longer assured to be about something we all did.
In Anderson’s book, our expanding tastes in these four areas are the tip of the iceberg. No longer forced to accept what the shelves of brick-and-mortar stores have to offer as all there is consumers now have the possibility of going directly into the Internet’s endless shelves of products where the popular and the unknown sit side by side.
This shattered the unifying aspects of popular culture into a long continuation of small niches, a.k.a, a ‘long tail’ of niches to follow the small group of ‘hits, a.k.a., the “head.”
The long tail, Anderson argues extends beyond commercial commodities. He considers online universities the Long Tail of education, customized t-shirts as the Long Tail of fashion, and even stateless terrorist organizations are the Long Tail of national security and warfare.
Ubiquitous as the Long Tail may be, Anderson stops short of offering a rose-colored picture of this phenomenon. Certain conditions must happen in order for the Long tail to benefit consumers and not just be a bumpy trip down a long list of half-baked imitations, knockoffs and simply low-quality stuff.
Variety and more choice alone will not shift demand away from the best-sellers and into the niches. At times, as seen by its jam example, variety sometimes overwhelms, resulting in fewer sales.
First, reaching these niches can’t be expensive, which thanks to the Internet and its combination of cheap broadband capacity, search engines and digital distribution, it no longer is in America.
Second, there must be a way to filter the digital wheat from the chaff. Thanks to a myriad of recomendations, rankings and once again those powerfully discriminating search engines people can reach what fits them best, not just what sells best. Third, customers must do the work of not just connoiseurs, but advertisers, Anderson argues, spreading the word through reviews and carrying an important part of the advertising cost.
The Long Tail, Anderson states, is not perfect and he offers Wikipedia as an example. The same thing that makes Wikipedia so versatile, its capacity to be updated by anyone at any time, opens it to criticism due to its variable degrees of accuracy.
However, among those same people who can besmirch entries with their half-truths, sit people with a computer at the ready, prepared to clean Wikipedia’s act if need be.
Wikipedia, as a result, is perhaps less authoritative but far more fluid, even more ‘alive’ of a document than some of its competitors -which can only be updated on the next edition.
Lastly, it is important to note that the abundance of Long Tail-type niches does not mean the end of the hit. In fact, Anderson would argue that in a way the head and the tail need each other. A merchant only offering products at the tail will find himself surrounded by customers who have no idea where to start, themselves surrounded by products varied in their origin but unified by their obscurity.
Moreover, the bricks and mortar stores still hold an advantage over online commerce: the instant gratification of paying for something and getting it right away.
However, a merchant only offering best-sellers will find himself a slave to limited shelf space, all the while contending with a curious consumer culture that will always be wondering if there isn’t something else “in the back.” Which now, thanks to unlimited choice and the Internet, there is, just not on those shelves.
In conclusion, I wholeheartedly recommend Andersons book for anybody wanting a first look at how the masses’ interaction with popular culture has shifted over the years and where it is headed now that the Internet has unveiled the broad expanse of options that lie beneath the bright lights shining upon what we think of as hit in today’s world.
References,
Anderson, C. (2006) The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. New York, NY. Hyperion.
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