The origin of long tail
In business, the long tail has been created by Chris Anderson, in 2004. The long tail theory is that, due to the cost and efficiency factors, when the goods storage circulation for the ground and channel display are broad enough, the production of commodity costs fell sharply leads to which individual can undertake production. In addition, when the sales of commodity costs are reduced sharply, almost any products which have been regarded as low demanding products can be sold, as long as those can be produced. Those requirement and products with low demands occupy the same common market share or even more than products of main stream.(ForaTv, 2006, December 5)
There is a video can help us to understand long tail more professionally.
In this video, it has mentioned what is the long tail and analysed the significance of long tail. In the past, individuals would focus on those important people or things, and ignored the major groups, which they need spend more energy and costs, who can be noticed. For instance, in procurement process, companies will keep a watchful eye on VIP, there will be less time considering major customers. However, in Internet era, as the costs of attention are extremely reduced, companies can be aware of those “tails” with pretty low costs, the entirety benefits of which can will be more that those “heads”.(Long tail, 2012)
ITUneS stores with long tail
iTunes Store has been introduced by Apple Inc on January 9, 2001. It is a multifunction tool, which can not only provide customers opportunities to listen music in advanced, but also support customers to rent or buy HD blockbuster movies and episodes of your favourite TV shows and shop for audiobooks and download apps for your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.(Bhavin, 2011, para. 4 )
However, at first, Apple Inc did not allow any other brand devices to use iTunes expect MAC. Later, they released the windows version of iTunes for extensive PC users. After the service was provided in 18 hours, iTunes had sold approximately 275,000 tracks. In 2005, there was a new feature being provided, which added music videos, short films and televisions programs to the store. In 2006, iTunes Music Store changed to iTunes Store, which is a new milestone for Apple. That means that it can allow customers download not only musics, but also movies, apps and audiobooks.
In conclusion
We can analyse from iTunes’ development journey, Apply has made a long tail, and it helps iTunes achieve success. iTunes Store has been to number one music store in the world. It provides more than 10 billion tracks to be downloaded.
References:
Wiki, 2012. Long tail. Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail
ForaTv. (2006, December 5).ForaTv – Identifying “The Long Tail” – Chris Anderson. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yku0GTrcuw&feature=fvwrelhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IM0iySVVLs
Bhavin. (2011, October 9). iTunes Store: Leveraging The Long Tail [Web log post]. Retrieved from: http://bkb90.wordpress.com/category/web-2-0/7-leveraging-the-long-tail/
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