Chris Anderson Long Tail Theory

Chris Anderson's "long tail" theory refers to the distribution of products to a niche market which becomes the majority of sales for an online business, unlike traditional retailers which target the masses. Chris Anderson talks a lot about amazon.com, the online book store, and how the majority of their sales come from niche markets and obscure books which cannot be found in book stores. He also refers to the way technology has had an effect on creating millions of niche markets thanks to the "infinite - shelf - space - effect". This ultimately means that things, as previously mentioned, which cannot be found in the stores, can be found online, there are no limitations to what can be found on the internet.

In the graph, Amazon's book sales or Netflix's movie rentals would be represented along the vertical axis, while the book or movie ranks are along the horizontal axis. The total volume of low popularity items exceeds the volume of high popularity items.