Long Tail Theory Looney Tunes

blind mice, a carving knife and academic voodoo

I read a quote recently in an article published by a Harvard Business School associate professor that stated, “Just because the Internet makes it possible to offer a near-infinite inventory of sale goods does not mean that consumers will want more obscure items in any great numbers” This prognostication floored me as all I could murmur was, “gee, ya-think?”

What’s worse is the representative data was drawn from popular song and movie databases which, in my experience, has nearly no tail at all or, depending on your viewpoint, is nearly all tail but, thats an entirely different article. Combine that with the notoriously cloudy weather 30,000 foot view of academia, it’s then no wonder it took a Harvard genus to cut to the blatantly obvious core of the issue.

Also stated was;

“No matter how I slice and dice the customer base, customers give lower ratings to obscure titles. A balanced picture emerges of the impact of online channels on market demand: Hit products remain dominant, even among consumers who venture deep into the tail. Hit products are also liked better than obscure products. It is a myth that obscure books, films, and songs are treasured. What consumers buy in internet channels is much the same as what they have always bought”

(once again) – ENTER ‘THE FLOOR’ – uh,ya, OK. Apparently there was a good old fashioned Nor’easter in full blow when that quote was written. Expanding that data to other vertical markets, thats like saying no one wants the ‘Netgear wpn824 Rangemax MIMO Wireless Router’ because it has only sold less than 1% of all routers sold.

Without delving too deeply into how a ‘hit product’ is defined as compared to how a ‘obscure product’ is defined ( I won’t even get into treasured), I think the real world translation is, “sell whats selling, not whats not”. I love the ambiguity of a false dichotomy, don’t you….

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Tags: Harvard, long tail, obscure products

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