問18
頻出度★★☆
インターネットショッピングのロングテール現象の説明として, 適切なものはどれか。
平成26年度 春期 ITパスポート試験 問18
ストラテジ系ビジネスインダストリ › e-ビジネス
This question's explanation and your answers so far.
解説
問 18
Incorrectア
This is the idea of an internal subsidy (cross-subsidy), in which the profit from hit products makes up for the losses of unprofitable products; it assumes that the tail still produces losses. The long tail claims the opposite, namely that the tail itself accumulates and produces profit, so this is not a correct description.
Incorrectイ
This switches the topic to the length of a time axis, saying that it takes a long time to become a hit product. The long in long tail refers to the tail of the distribution stretching far out when products are lined up in order of sales; it does not refer to the selling period or to a slow start.
- ウ
正解 The correct answer is ウ: because the costs required for sales are low, profits can be made by handling a large number of low-sales products. The term long tail comes from the shape of a graph in which products are lined up in order of sales, from largest to smallest: to the right of the hit products that tower up on the left (the head), products with small sales continue on and on like a long tail. In a physical store, shelf space and stock space are limited, and stocking products that rarely sell makes storage costs and lost opportunities larger than the gain, so the store has no choice but to narrow its range down to best-selling items. In internet shopping, by contrast, adding product pages costs almost nothing and stock can be consolidated at distribution centers, so the selling cost per item is extremely small. As a result, even if each individual product sells only a few units a year, handling tens of thousands of them lets the sales in the tail add up and produce a profit overall. In other words, the key points of the long tail are two: that low costs make it possible to handle many kinds of niche products, and that the total of these small-volume, wide-variety sales becomes a source of profit. Choice ウ states both of them correctly.
Incorrectエ
This describes hit products continuing to sell well thanks to word of mouth such as blog reviews (e-word-of-mouth), which is a matter of viral marketing or word-of-mouth effects. Moreover, its subject is products on the head side with large sales, which is exactly the opposite viewpoint from the long tail, which focuses on the many products with small sales.
ここがポイント
- Long tail: the phenomenon in which, when products are lined up in order of sales from largest to smallest, the combined sales of the many low-volume products that continue far out at the lower end account for a large share. It is easy to achieve in internet shopping, where selling and inventory costs are small.
- A physical store, constrained by its shelves, tends to narrow down to best-selling products (a Pareto-like concentration at the top), whereas internet shopping can expand its product range almost without limit. This difference is the precondition that makes the long tail possible.
用語