Chris Anderson initially published an article on The Long Tail in Wired Magazine, and then went on to write the book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.
Anderson argues that products that have low demand collectively would be able to make up the market share en order to compete with the few mainstream “hits”. This is only possible if the store has a large enough distribution and an “unlimited” selection.
This is an extract taken from Chris Anderson article on The Long Tail (2004)
“Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it in service after service, from DVDs at Netflix to music videos on Yahoo! Launch to songs in the iTunes Music Store and Rhapsody. People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what’s available at Blockbuster Video, Tower Records, and Barnes & Noble. And the more they find, the more they like. 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).” Anderson 2004http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html
This Long Tail market has been created by the internet, allowing small businesses/ niches to tap in to the market successfully.
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