AN OVERVIEW OF LONG TAIL MARKETING STRATEGY AND ITS CHALLENGES: A QUALITATIVE STUDY

According to traditional marketing paradigms, consumer businesses should focus on the marketing of highly profitable mainstream products and services which have highest individual demand and compete to capture or retain market share. However, mass-markets suffer from high competition and the leading mainstream products while possessing high market share as compared to individual alternative offerings of the same category and also possess low premiums and turbulent product life-cycles and distribution channels. In contrast to the mass-market, there exists the long tail, the aggregate of all alternative offerings to the leading mainstream products and services. Individual offerings within the long tail do not have same high demand that popular mainstream products enjoy but the aggregate demand of the long-tail can eclipse that of the mass-market. Moreover, long tail goods due to reduced competition in niches are able to enjoy greater premiums, customer loyalty and low volatility in their demand and supply. Thus, marketing to the long-tail is a viable market strategy. In this paper, the researcher explores the scope of long-tail marketing, its fundamental challenges and how long-tail market strategy could potentially be facilitated.