Will the Recession Strain “The Long Tail”?

With offline retailers looking more closely at the inventories they carry and cutting out products that just don’t sell very much (i.e. items in the “long tail”), one has to wonder if some online retailers will eventually be forced to do the same thing.

The decline in consumer spending looks to be a protracted affair and while the economics of online retailing provide for much more flexibility at the top of the market, with consumers spending less, I think that the “long tail” could very well come under pressure in some markets unless there’s a surprisingly quick turnaround in the economy

A full discussion of this topic serves as my weekly Econsultancy post.

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