The Long Tail – Why The Future Of Business Is Selling Less Of More By Chris Anderson – Montreal Business Book Club September Selection

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The September session of The Montreal Business Book Club will feature The Long Tail – Why The Future Of Business Is Selling Less Of More by Chris Anderson. This discussion is taking place on Wednesday, September 27th, 6:30 pm at Twist Image.
Chris Anderson is the Editor of Wired Magazine and he first came up with the concept of The Long Tail for this article: The Long Tail. The concept has become a part of marketing and business vernacular like The Tipping Point.
It’s a fantastic read that gives insights to keep you in conversation shape at your next business or networking event.
Here’s a description of The Long Tail from Chris Anderson’s Blog/website:
“The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of ‘hits’ (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. 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-target goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.
Traditional retail economics dictate that stores only stock the likely hits, because shelf space is expensive. But online retailers (from Amazon to iTunes) can stock virtually everything, and the number of available niche products outnumbers the hits by several orders of magnitude. Those millions of niches are the Long Tail, which had been largely neglected until recently in favor of the Short Head of hits.
When consumers are offered infinite choice, the true shape of demand is revealed. And it turns out to be less hit-centric than we thought. People gravitate towards niches because they satisfy narrow interests better, and in one aspect of our life or another we all have some narrow interest (whether we think of it that way or not).”
As always, everyone is free to join, but please RSVP by email to me and make sure to read this: The Montreal Business Book Club – A Primer.
You can learn more about the book here: The Long Tail – Why The Future Of Business Is Selling Less Of More by Chris Anderson.

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