The Long Tail by Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson, "The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business is Selling Less of More," (New York: Hyperion; 2006), 267 pages.

Wired Magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson sums up in this book how commerce is changing due to the internet. He callas his critique "the theory of the long tail," and it boils down to this: society's purchases are shifting away from mainstream products and markets toward a huge number of niches. Without the constraints of physical shelf-space in traditional retail outlets, and without the other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly targeted goods and services can be economically attractive as traditional retailing. In the age of the internet or the long-tail, business should acknowledge the following:

• There are more niche goods than hits.
• The costs of reaching those niches is falling dramatically, making it possible to offer a massively expanded variety of products.
• Consumers must be given ways to find these niches to cause demand for products in these niches.
• Once there is massively expanded variety and ways to find it, there will be hits and niches but the hits relatively less popular and the niches more specialized.
• There are so many niche products that collectively they can comprise a market rivaling the hits.
• The demand for goods and products is diverse as the population itself.

Anderson's argument is well thought out and convincing. The book is based on an article that he wrote for Wired Magazine. It is rational and supported by many examples, diagrams and charts. It works in that it shows how the internet expanded the range of options for consumers by having a vast range of goods made available to them at wholesale prices. For businessmen, the interest is in recognizing that there are many profitable niches for then to sell to people via the internet. If the book has a flaw it is that it labors the point. Anderson takes up a lot of pages in a book to make his point previously made in a magazine article. I'm not sure that we learn all that much more by reading the book. It does, however, explain the new phenomenon of internet retailing, and is surely be a must-read book for internet marketers and business owners interested in making the most of the opportunities that the internet provides.

"Buying In," by Robert Walker

"Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are," by Robert Walker (New York: Random House; 2008), 291 pages.

Buying In is a refutation of the professional marketers' arguments that "brands are dead" and that "advertising no longer works." Author Rob Walker argues that people are embracing brands more than ever, that brands are fracturing, and people are able to access these brands through combinations of technology, viral marketing, and the use of key people or word-of-mouth agents and promoters marketing products on behalf of corporations, acquaintances, and friends. Marketing is now entwined with cultural and social connections. Walker also explores a practice he calls murketing (a combination of murky and marketing) and how people buy products not just for their use, utility or function, but also as expressions of their identity. It’s as though you are what you buy.

Buying In appears to be like Malcolm Gladwell's books (the covers seem to be somewhat similar), but it has none of Gladwell's diverse subject matter or arguments on a range of subjects. Buying In is about marketing and how innovative marketing programs have been successful in a technological age. The narrow focus of this book is its greatest strength, and makes this book mostly of interest to marketers and merchandisers. Non-marketers, like me, might find this book repetitive and a long-winded explanation for what should be a simple story. It may also be of little value to the novice reader of marketing books, unless it is a steeply discounted remainder copy at a discount store.