21A – Reading Reflection No. 2

What was the general theme or argument of the book?

As the world becomes more digitalized and relying less on brick and mortar stores, it has caused the marketplace to become more segmented and move toward niche products. Instead of selling millions of a particular product, a company will only sell a few thousand but offer hundreds of products. Since a huge portion of the buying experience is online through Amazon, Netflix or Apple, these companies don’t need to spend money on shelf space; but instead can spend on storage space, or digital space housing inventory or digital copies.

The main theme of this book is the long tail. That is why it’s called The Long Tail. Essentially the long tail explains that most of the sales of a company are through hits, or in the head part of the diagram. Then the niche products make up the long tail. There are many more niche products out there, but only make up a fraction of the sales. In retail, it costs a to use up shelf space so only the hits can be displayed, but due to the internet, everything can be displayed because it costs essentially nothing.  

How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?

Being an entrepreneur, your trying to create a solution to a problem that fills a need to a mass market. Everyone is trying to build the next iPhone, or computer. However, this book explains that trying to create a product that fits everyone’s need is outdated, and could actually alienate your market. An entrepreneur should try and create a product or service that is niche because in the future, niche products will dominate the market.

If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?

I would have the class take a survey and then compare the results to see if the overwhelming majority liked all of the same things or had different tastes. I would compare their favorite band and song. Then their favorite movie. After that I would see what type of clothes they liked to wear, i.e.: brand and style. Then move too their favorite foods, snacks, and beverages. All of this would be to try and figure out if we all have similar or diverse interests and tastes. Conducting a survey off 500 kids and doing that for two to three classes would give a large enough foundation to either support or disprove this thesis that our culture is moving to more niche products.

What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations?

When I was the reading the nine rules in forming a successful aggregator, rule number two gave me that “aha” moment. Rule two states that it is smart to let customers do the work for the company. It makes complete sense, but I never would have thought in trying it. The point is to use crowdsourcing, such as user-submitted reviews. It’s much more economical to the companies, as well as, customers trust it more. Generally, the reviews are well informed and the people writing the reviews care about the product and can explain the needs and wants of the product. Twenty years ago, companies had to spend millions of dollars doing research, trying to find out the needs of their customers. Now customers are freely telling them what they want.