The Long Tail

How endless choice is creating unlimited demand.

Chris Anderson looks at how marketing and business is changing in the twenty first century. The Internet has dramatically increased the opportunity for marketing products of all kinds including music, film and books. Shops tend to stock primarily best sellers when selecting products but the establishment of virtual stores means the availability of a greater range of products and the opportunity for more products to be sold, though often in smaller quantities. In the virtual stores the combination of large numbers of items selling small quantities can equal or surpass a few items selling large number of quantities, which is the norm in traditional stores.

A comparison is made with the effect on marketing in the late nineteenth century of Sears & Roebuck with their mail order service from catalogues before eventually establishing retail stores.

Increasing people are using the Internet to purchase items and producers of items are increasingly using the Internet to promote and sell their products which are often not available in conventional stores. This trend is enabling more people, who would normally have difficulty marketing their product, to distribute their items .