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Long tail
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==Business== The distribution and inventory costs of businesses successfully applying a long tail strategy allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The total sales of this large number of "non-hit items" is called "the long tail". Given enough choice, a large population of customers, and negligible stocking and distribution costs, the selection and buying pattern of the population results in the demand across products having a [[power law]] distribution or [[Pareto distribution]]. It is important to understand why some distributions are normal vs. long tail (power) distributions. Chris Anderson argues that while quantities such as human height or [[IQ]] follow a normal distribution, in [[scale-free network]]s with [[preferential attachment]]s, power law distributions are created, i.e. because some nodes are more connected than others (like [[Malcolm Gladwell]]'s βmavensβ in ''[[The Tipping Point]]'').<ref>Carr, Nicholas [http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/08/the_shape_of_th.php "The shape of the tail."], roughtype.com, 2006</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Anderson|first=Chris|title=scifoo: A problem with the Long Tail|year=2006|publisher=Hyperion|location=New York, NY|isbn=978-1-4013-0237-5|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/longtailwhyfutur00ande}}</ref>
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