Anatomy of the Long Tail: Ordinary People with Extraordinary Tastes

The success of "infinite-inventory" retailers such as Amazon.com and Netflix has been ascribed to a "long tail" phenomenon. To wit, while the majority of their inventory is not in high demand, in aggregate these "worst sellers," unavailable at limited-inventory competitors, generate a significant fraction of total revenue. The long tail phenomenon, however, is in principle consistent with two fundamentally different theories. The first, and more popular hypothesis, is that a majority of consumers consistently follow the crowds and only a minority have any interest in niche content; the second hypothesis is that everyone is a bit eccentric, consuming both popular and specialty products. Based on examining extensive data on user preferences for movies, music, Web search, and Web browsing, we find overwhelming support for the latter theory. However, the observed eccentricity is much less than what is predicted by a fully random model whereby every consumer m...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: WSDM
• Authors: Andrei Z. Broder, Bo Pang, Evgeniy Gabrilovich, Sharad Goel
• Keywords: Data Mining, Long Tail Phenomenon, Tail Availability, Tail Demand, WSDM 2010