THE LONG TAIL - PARADISE OF CHOICE - PART VI
In recent blogs, we have talked about Anderson's views on the abundance of information in the new economy and, in Chapter 10 of The Long Tail, Anderson describes this "paradise of choice".
He starts the chapter by reminding us of a Saturday Night Live skit in 1978 featuring a store in a trendy mall called "The Scotch Boutique" which sold nothing but scotch tape. Its proprietors were puzzled over the absence of customers as they offered so many kinds of tape that surely one would appeal to nearly everyone, and yet there was no traffic. The humour came from the fact that, in 1978, the idea of a store simply for scotch tape seemed absurd. Anderson goes on to note that in 2004 a store called "Rice to Riches" opened in Manhattan, which sells 20 flavours of rice pudding and nothing else.
Despite the emergence of niche stores like "Rice to Riches", Anderson tells us (at page 168) that we are in the midst of the biggest explosion of variety in history. He points to the fact that there are approximately 19,000 variations of Starbucks coffee and 26,893 new food and household products were introduced in 2003 (including 115 deodorants). Anderson goes on to investigate (at page 169) why there has been such an explosion of variety. In an effort to answer this question, he points to globalization and its effect on the efficiency of supply and demand. Demographics also play an important role and he cites a BusinessWeek article recently describing this phenomenon:
In the 1950s and 1960s, the country was far more uniform in terms of not only ethnicity - the Hispanic influx had not yet begun - but also of aspiration. The governing idea was not merely to keep up with the Joneses, but to be the Joneses - to own the same model of car or dishwasher or lawnmower. As levels of affluence rose markedly in the 1970s and 1980s, status was refined. We've had a change from "I want to be normal" to "I want to be special". As companies competed to indulge this yearning, they began to elaborate mass production into mass customization.
Finally, Anderson notes (at page 169) that iTunes offers nearly 40 times the selection of Walmart. Clearly, the paradise of choice can be a bit overwhelming.
All the best, Suzana and Ian.
