Your browser (Internet Explorer 7 or lower) is out of date. It has known security flaws and may not display all features of this and other websites. Learn how to update your browser.

X

Navigate / search

Why the long tail isn’t killing the hit – the paradox of engagement

In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson persuasively argued that the internet is facilitating a shift from mainstream hits towards increasingly niche interests, however, the continuing popularity of blockbusters such as Avatar suggests that the hits are as popular as ever. More interestingly, the experience of ‘long tail’ companies such as Netflix indicates that contrary to conventional wisdom, the engaged customers aren’t always the most satisfied.

It is logical to assume that, given the breadth of movies offered by a service like Netflix, customers with a specialist interest in films would get more pleasure from the DVDs they choose than your average punter. However, according to The Economist, the reverse is true.

A Wharton Business School study analysing reviews on Netflix found that blockbusters get better ratings from the people who have watched them than more obscure titles – even Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which was consistently slammed by the critics, is awarded four stars out of five. Another study by Harvard Business School apparently found a similar story on Quickflix, the Australian equivalent.

So why do hits continue to be so popular?

One of the classic arguments is that people still crave shared experiences. Another key factor is that consumer decision-making doesn’t seem to be keeping pace with technological change. Back in 1963, William McPhee’s 1963 study Formal Theories of Mass Behaviour explained the dynamics of a hit: “a disproportionate share of the audience for a hit was made up of people who consumed few products of that type”. The Economist argues that this phenomenon still rings true today:

“A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better.”

My current Quickflix recommendations
My current Quickflix recommendations

Indeed, my initial interest in the dynamics of DVD ratings was sparked by my own slightly frustrating experience with Quickflix, which seems in line with the findings of the above studies.

As someone who watches quite a broad range of movies, I started noticing that most of the fairly obscure titles I am recommended by Quickflix seem to be rated no higher than two to three stars, while blockbusters typically receive three or four stars minimum.

The result: rather than encouraging users further down the long tail, the current user-powered recommendations may in fact be reinforcing the tyranny of the hit.

Shunning greater choice

With the amount of content on the internet predicted to double roughly every five years, we’re clearly not short of information to help us make these decisions. However, as Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice suggested, greater choice has been shown to make decision-making more complex and ultimately less satisfying.

Blockbusters receive consistently higher ratings on Quickflix
Blockbusters receive consistently higher ratings on Quickflix

Arguably many of us gravitate to the familiar in order to avoid being overwhelmed by the amount of information at our disposal, subconsciously screening out options that require further investigation. According to Rory Sutherland, this is because, except in a few areas of specialist interest, minimising risk has a far greater influence on our decision-making than optimising choice. And if minimising risk is driving our decision-making, it is likely that we are applying similar criteria to rating what we bought.

The success of retailers such as Amazon demonstrates that serving niche interests can be an incredibly lucrative growth strategy. However, as marketers continue to evangelise the benefits of deeper customer engagement, it’s important to remember that these highly engaged customers can also be the hardest to please.

UPDATE 14/04/10: An article in FastCompany reveals that Zappos’ best customers return around 50% of the goods they buy, compared to an average return rate of roughly 35%. However, while free return shipping may make these customers more expensive to service, by reducing the risk of a bad decision, it encourages them to spend significantly more overall.

When ‘the least likely to be shite’ option is perfect

The word ‘engagement’ gets used a lot by marketers these days – in fact a few new synonyms would be helpful for the digital strategy I’m working on at the moment.

For a lot of brands, creating content that consumers want to engage with is absolutely the right approach, particularly if it’s around a shared passion or topic that people actively want to discuss.

However, it’s easy to forget that in many of the purchasing decisions we make every day, we don’t want to be engaged, we just want to get it done with minimal fuss.

Rory Sutherland has a great piece on his blog about this phenomenon: his argument is that most people make most of their decisions based on minimising risk rather than optimising choice. In other words it’s not about making your brand the best – it’s about being the least likely to be shite. As a consumer, this is the difference between being a ‘maximiser’ and a ‘satisficer’:

“If you are an expert in a field, you are a maximiser. Your car is Teutonic. You listen to relatively obscure Indie music. You wear niche clothes brands, like those funny jeans with a wiggle on them…But most people tend to be maximisers in a few areas only – for most of us it’s simply too much intellectual effort to compete in every field.

Now, here’s the issue. Most people, in most fields of consumption, most of the time are NOT maximisers at all. They are something completely different. They are satisficers. What they are doing is not using insane amounts of mental energy to attempt to optimise every decison. They are instead simply trying to avoid making a decision that is actually bad or which might cause them to look or feel foolist. For those people, good enough generally is.”

Rory Sutherland: ‘Do people in the music industry understand music? And do people in the Advertising industry understand brands?’

This doesn’t mean do nothing. Using compelling content to increase your online visibility and credibility can be a great way of engaging the ‘maximisers’ while also making you seem less risky in the eyes of the ‘satisficers’.

Ultimately, it’s about understanding your different audiences and tailoring messaging accordingly. And as the the Fina ad cleverly acknowledges, it’s worth remembering that most of these people probably don’t care as much about your brand as you do.