The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
Book Summary Review
This is the first of my Business Briefs, not a full book review but a review of a book summary - The Long Tail by Chris Anderson summarised by Business Summaries.
The aim of the service is to bring you the core knowledge of a new business book without you having to spend the time to read the full book. Someone else has done that and summarised it for you.
This full title is "The Long Tail: Why The Future Of Business Is Selling Less Of More."
The Long Tail is a really powerful concept and I have wanted to read the full book for some time but it has never reached the top of my agenda.
Basically the long tail is the phenomenon of mainstream products being divided into niches which can then be divided into sub-niches.
The latent demand has always been there but practical reasons have stopped this long tail demand for specialised products and services to be realised.
But from the late 1990s onwards the physical restrictions caused by store capacity, lack of knowledge of the alternatives and stores only serving a local demand have been blown apart by the Internet.
For example Amazon can bring you far more books and CDs than a traditional store. It doesn't have to stock the long tail but because it lists the product and because we can go and search easily, we find something that we want.
For example I am addicted to classic rock music from the sixties and seventies and one of the genres that I like is known as UK pub rock.
A leading band was called Ducks Deluxe and during 2007 the BBC released a new album of radio sessions recorded over thirty years ago. This won't appeal to many people. It never made the charts, but thanks to Amazon listing it and me being able to search for it, the CD has been included in this year's letter to Santa. A sale only made viable due to the economic phenomenon of the long tail.
The Long Tail challenges the thinking behind the 80/20 Pareto curve. Mainstream blockbusters may still dominate the popular market but pricing pressures takes away much of the profit.
The Long Tail presents an opportunity to profit from this fragmenting of demand and is an important force for the future.
Conclusion on The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
The summary is excellent, presenting the development of The Long Tail from the birth of catalogues back in the late 19th century through to the Internet Age but then goes on to look at to take advantage of this phenomenon in the future.
I want to read the full book of The Long Tail and thanks to Business Summaries. I know that it is worth investing my time and effort in it.
Rating 4.5 Stars - the only reason why I haven't ordered the book immediately is because I have a big backlog of reading to do.
If you would like to buy the book of "The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson then you can get it from Amazon UK and USA.
Comments