Chris Anderson was the editor of Wired magazineuntil 2012. Now he is the co-founder and chief executive officer of 3D Robotics, a company that produces drones. His book The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand (Updated and Expanded Edition, 2009) was shortlisted for the 2006 Financial Timesand Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.
Before online retailing, there were brick-and-mortar stores like Borders, Barnes & Noble and Circuit City. If you consider books specifically, the average Barnes & Noble superstore carried around 100,000 titles. Of these, some were hits (the top 1,000 maybe) while the rest could be categorised as misses. So, such superstores had to be selective about what they displayed on their shelves.
But an online store like Amazon can carry five million book titles. Here, it is found that “more than a quarter of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 100,000 titles”. This is the long tail.
As Anderson writes, “If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is already a third the size of the existing market – and what’s more, it’s growing quickly. If these growth trends continue, the potential book market may actually be half again as big as it appears to be, if only we can get over the economics of scarcity…”
The same is true for other Long Tail markets we’ve looked at… Google, for instance, makes most of its money not from huge corporate advertisers, but from small ones (the Long Tail of advertising). eBay is mostly Tail as well – niche products from collector cars to tricked-out golf clubs.
The long tail, which has become a dominant idea in the last decade, replaces the “hits and misses” concept with the “hits and niches” theme. These hits are in the short head of the distribution, but the niches in the long tail can be equally important. What makes this the case?
The forces that make things so are the following:
1. The cost of production of music, videos, books and so on are coming down (being democratised). An important reason for this turn has been the personal computer – along with digital video cameras, editing software and blogging tools.
2. The cost of distribution of niche products has also come down. As Anderson says, “The PC made everyone a producer or publisher, but it was the Internet that made everyone a distributor.” Companies such as Amazon, eBay and Netflix have democratised distribution.
3. Supply can be efficiently connected with demand especially due to Google search, iTunes recommendations, blogs, customer reviews, and so on.
The contributors to the long tail all are not always motivated by monetary rewards. Some do it for fun, some for experimentation and some for respect and reputation in the eyes of their peers. Academics, for example, do not mind free downloads of their papers since it increases their long-term impact.
As an example, Anderson analyses the Wikipedia phenomenon. Started in 2001 by Jimmy Wales, by 2005 Wikipedia was the largest encyclopaedia on Earth. While the Encyclopaedia Britannica offered 65,000 articles in the print edition and Encarta offered 60,000 articles, Wikipedia offered over two million articles in English alone, written by 75,000 contributors (2009 statistics).
Anderson asks: “Is Wikipedia ‘authoritative’? Well, no. But what really is? Britannica is reviewed by a smaller group of reviewers with higher academic degrees on average. There are, to be sure, fewer (if any) total clunkers or fabrications than in Wikipedia. But it’s not infallible either; indeed a 2005 study by Nature, the scientific journal, reported that in forty-two entries on science topics there was an average of four errors per entry in Wikipedia and three in Britannica. And shortly after the report came out, the Wikipedia entries were corrected, while Britannica had to wait for its next reprinting.”
Wikipedia offers all the entries expected in standard references, but then adds to it hundreds of thousands of unexpected ones as well. This long tail is easily searchable and the niches accessible. (Note: The last printed version of Britannica was in 2010. (Now it’s available online.)
Similarly, none of the long tail amateur efforts like blogs and recorded performances is authoritative. But collectively, they are proving more than equal to the mainstream media. Some blogs like ‘Boing Boing’ and ‘PostSecret’ have successfully competed with the mainstream media in terms of popularity. Anderson provides several examples of music, movies, television shows and blogs in this case.
Anderson says the world of scarcity (for which conventional economics with its allocation of resources has been constructed) is now replaced by the world of plentitude. He predicts that the digital marketplace, far from a fad, is here to stay because of the attractive economics of selling online.
This is an interesting thesis which presents huge implications in the coming decades, especially for a country like India which is transitioning to the online world at a rapid pace.
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[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]2021 WEF Global Gender Gap report, which confirmed its 2016 finding of a decline in worldwide progress towards gender parity.
Over 2.8 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men. As many as 104 countries still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs, 59 countries have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace, and it is astonishing that a handful of countries still allow husbands to legally stop their wives from working.
Globally, women’s participation in the labour force is estimated at 63% (as against 94% of men who participate), but India’s is at a dismal 25% or so currently. Most women are in informal and vulnerable employment—domestic help, agriculture, etc—and are always paid less than men.
Recent reports from Assam suggest that women workers in plantations are paid much less than men and never promoted to supervisory roles. The gender wage gap is about 24% globally, and women have lost far more jobs than men during lockdowns.
The problem of gender disparity is compounded by hurdles put up by governments, society and businesses: unequal access to social security schemes, banking services, education, digital services and so on, even as a glass ceiling has kept leadership roles out of women’s reach.
Yes, many governments and businesses had been working on parity before the pandemic struck. But the global gender gap, defined by differences reflected in the social, political, intellectual, cultural and economic attainments or attitudes of men and women, will not narrow in the near future without all major stakeholders working together on a clear agenda—that of economic growth by inclusion.
The WEF report estimates 135 years to close the gap at our current rate of progress based on four pillars: educational attainment, health, economic participation and political empowerment.
India has slipped from rank 112 to 140 in a single year, confirming how hard women were hit by the pandemic. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two Asian countries that fared worse.
Here are a few things we must do:
One, frame policies for equal-opportunity employment. Use technology and artificial intelligence to eliminate biases of gender, caste, etc, and select candidates at all levels on merit. Numerous surveys indicate that women in general have a better chance of landing jobs if their gender is not known to recruiters.
Two, foster a culture of gender sensitivity. Take a review of current policies and move from gender-neutral to gender-sensitive. Encourage and insist on diversity and inclusion at all levels, and promote more women internally to leadership roles. Demolish silos to let women grab potential opportunities in hitherto male-dominant roles. Work-from-home has taught us how efficiently women can manage flex-timings and productivity.
Three, deploy corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds for the education and skilling of women and girls at the bottom of the pyramid. CSR allocations to toilet building, the PM-Cares fund and firms’ own trusts could be re-channelled for this.
Four, get more women into research and development (R&D) roles. A study of over 4,000 companies found that more women in R&D jobs resulted in radical innovation. It appears women score far higher than men in championing change. If you seek growth from affordable products and services for low-income groups, women often have the best ideas.
Five, break barriers to allow progress. Cultural and structural issues must be fixed. Unconscious biases and discrimination are rampant even in highly-esteemed organizations. Establish fair and transparent human resource policies.
Six, get involved in local communities to engage them. As Michael Porter said, it is not possible for businesses to sustain long-term shareholder value without ensuring the welfare of the communities they exist in. It is in the best interest of enterprises to engage with local communities to understand and work towards lowering cultural and other barriers in society. It will also help connect with potential customers, employees and special interest groups driving the gender-equity agenda and achieve better diversity.