The era of the misses

Online-shopping is a god sent gift to everyone, who is fed up with mainstream products that don´t really apply to their interests.
When people shop on the web today they have not only logged on to save a few dollars on an item that would be findable in any physical store. Many of them are instead looking for just that special book or music-track, that only can be found online because of its narrow appeal.

As described in the article The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, the market for online-shopping is just as much about the misses than about the hits, which actually means that people now have a wide selection of misses to choose from. I must agree that this is good news, not only for consumers, but just as well for the survival and development of a niche-culture.

Thanks to the web an unknown artist doesn´t necessarily need to have a big company in the back to rise to the top. If the product is good enough the word of mouth-technic can do the trick. However, in the real world the focus will probably still be on the mainstream products, as long as it doesn´t pay the movietheater-rent to show a film that isn´t promoted as a blockbuster.

But hopefully the online-shopping patterns can give the marketing executives an idea about the possibilities that the niche-market contains and prevent them from always going for the lowest common denominator. And maybe give the people something they didn´t knew they wanted.