eCommerce Trends and the Long-Tail

As technology improves, the trends in eCommerce increase as well. Not only is it becoming better for the company, but for the consumer as well. The use of Big Data is helping with the customer's experience with eCommerce. Website's are picking up trends that the consumer is making in order to serve his or her needs better. Now, this is mutually beneficial for the client and the company. The company can benefit, as they are no longer a brick-and-motor company with unlimited shelf space. Take Amazon for example, they have a vast variety of products for sale, with unlimited shelf space. This allows for them to not only capture the "Hit's" market for popular products, but it allows them to squirrel the long tail as well.

Now what is the long-tail?

The long tail consists of products that may be less popular, but have a large audience and demand. For example, when Record Label companies sign an artist, they market this artist as a "Hit" artist. Their music plays multiple times a day on the radio, and companies that sell albums such as HMV have to selectively choose which CD's they want to sell on their shelves. Now, what happens to all the indie music or the music that is not a "Hit". There is still a demand for this type of music. iTunes, Beatport, and other music eCommerce websites allows for consumers to buy individual tracks (as supposed to a whole CD), and there is an unlimited amount of music genres and artists because they are not limited by shelf space.

So this Long-Tail, allows for Amazon to capture 100% of the market, as supposed to brick-and-motor companies with limited shelf space. They can only put a certain amount of products on their shelves, and therefore must be selective with the products they choose to sell. Amazon is now using Big Data to recommend products to their customers that are in the long-tail (that might not be as popular as the "hit" products). In the end, both the consumer and the company are happy.