A01 chaf6542 06 se fm indd

 long-  tail  concept

 is useful for considering the role of Product, Place, Price and 

Promotion online as explained in Box 8.2.

The   long-  tail 

concept

A frequency distribution 

suggesting the relative 

variation in popularity 

of items selected by 

consumers.

Figure 8.20

The elements of the marketing mix

Using the Internet to vary the marketing mix

Product

• Quality

• Image

• Branding

• Features

• Variants

• Mix

• Support

• Customer

service

• Use

occasion

• Availability

• Warranties

Promotion

• Marketing

communications

• Personal

promotion

• Sales

promotion

• PR

• Branding

• Direct

marketing

Price

• Positioning

• List

• Discounts

• Credit

• Payment

methods

• Free or

value-

added

elements

Place

• Trade

channels

• Sales

support

• Channel

number

• Segmented

channels

People

• Individuals

on marketing

activities

• Individuals

on customer

contact

• Recruitment

• Culture/

image

• Training

and skills

• Remuneration

Process

• Customer

focus

• Business-led

• IT-supported

• Design

features

• Research

and

development

Physical evidence

• Sales/staff

contact

experience

of brand

• Product

packaging

• Online

experience

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Chapter 8  Digital marketing

Box 8.2

Applying  the   long‑  tail  concept

The phenomenon now referred to as the ‘long tail’, following an article by Anderson 

(2004), was arguably first applied to human behaviour by George Kingsley Zipf, profes‑

sor of linguistics at Harvard, who observed the phenomenon in word usage (see http://

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law). He found that if the variation in popularity of dif‑

ferent words in a language is considered, there is a systematic pattern in the frequency 

of usage or popularity. Zipf’s ‘law’ suggests that if a collection of items is ordered or 

ranked by popularity, the second item will have around half the popularity of the first 

one and the third item will have about a third of the popularity of the first one and so 

on. In general:

The kth item is 1/k the popularity of the first.

Look at Figure 8.21 which shows how the ‘relative popularity’ of items is predicted to 

decline according to Zipf’s law from a maximum count of 1,000 for the most popular 

item to 20 for the 50th item.

In an online context, application of this ‘law’ is now known as ‘the long tail’ thanks 

to Anderson (2004). It can be applied to the relative popularity of a group of websites or 

web pages or products on an individual site, since they tend to show a similar pattern 

of popularity. There are a small number of sites (or pages within sites) which are very 

popular (the head which may account for 80% of the volume) and a much larger num‑

ber of sites or pages that are less popular individually, but still collectively important. 

Returning to the product context, Anderson (2004) argued that for a company such as 

Amazon, the long tail or Zipf’s law can be applied to describe the variation in prefer‑

ences for selecting or purchasing from a choice for products as varied as books, CDs, 

electronic items, travel or financial services. This pattern has also been identified by 

Brynjolfsson et al. (2003) who present a framework that quantifies the economic impact 

of increased product variety made available through electronic markets. They say:

One reason for increased product variety on the Internet is the ability of online 

retailers to catalog, recommend, and provide a large number of products for sale. 

For example, the number of book titles available at Amazon.com is more than 

23 times larger than the number of books on the shelves of a typical Barnes & Noble 

Figure 8.21

Zipf’s law, showing decrease in popularity of items within an 

ordered sequence

1

50

0

Position of item in sequence

Relative popularity

200

400

600

800

1000

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