Leveraging the long Tail

The term “Long Tail” has been defined by Anderson as a curve of statistics depicting benefits that website based organizations with large amount of products have, apart from traditional retail stores of brick and mortal with restricted space in shelves for extensive markets. The long tail theory dictates that our economy and culture is shifting increasingly away from a hub on comparatively less number of “hits” (conventional markets and products) at the head towards tail constituting large amount of niches. "As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare".  (Anderson, 2004). 

The concept of long tail has laid emphasis on content that has less popularity and that cannot be acquired with an ease due to physical restriction such as space within the shelf (Porter, 2005). “Leveraging the long tail” focusing on generic product’s extreme popularity which are convenient to access on internet. As such products are sold in greater volume; their strength is leveraged to reveal more peculiar products of niche market which are having less popularity. The long tail’s beauty is that there is large number of niche products which covers up greater space on internet. With infinite space on shelf, low material cost and courtesy of internet production, it has now been realized by businesses that it is all about matter of awareness and exposure.

Users of eBay are allowed to list any of the products on sale having minimum cost and fuss. All of the company’s items are catered, permitting for restricted listings that ultimately provide greater level of facilitation to countless base of products.  Customers gets attracted towards products of eBay due to low prices and it also provides its customers with an opportunity to buy outright or win an auction, by the probability of searching that product which they cannot sort out at any other place. Hits are being delivered by eBay to niches by initial clientele drawing with comparatively competitive pricing for generic, popular products.

eBay has developed three essential long tail forces of driving . These include;

• ·         They permit any of the products to be sold (extending the tail to largest possible level).
• ·         No requirement of physical shop exists, which substantially reduces consumption cost.
• ·      Associating products with each other through reviews of user enhances the overall rate of profitability. 

It is all about what and how eBay performs its functions, providing customers with cost effective solutions for approaching niche market. Self service of customer, according to my opinion is superior source that must have to be utilized by technologies of web 2.0, specifically when market’s long tail is to be reached.

References

Anderson, C. (2004). The Long Tail.http://thelongtail.com/about.html

Porter, J. (2005). Long tail and Web 2.0. //bokardo.com/archives/long-tail-web2/