A happy customer

I’ve had enough of looking for a product and going from shop to shop without any result sometimes. I’ve wasted my time, my money, my energy and nerves.
But now, I’m a happy customer!!!
I find what I’m looking for easier and faster, I benefit by recommendations, I know immediately if it’s in stock or not and it’s delivered at home!
Because I buy on Amazon.com, Fnac.fr, Vente-privée.com, 3suisses.fr……….
What’s that?

It’s “The Long Tail”.
It’s the concept that describes the business models of selling on Internet. It explores new forms of sale without limitation of physic, time, geographical area, number of customers or high cost of production, marketing and distribution (in the case of purely digital services like iTunes).

The Long Tail represents economic models of virtual mega stores proposing very wide assortment where the products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can make up a market share bigger than those of hits, because everything is available, even the oldest ones which is no more produced.

Who are the customers?
People of all ages, all colours, all cultures in front of their computers, who save their time, money and energy, because everything could be find, everything could be taste and new horizons could be explored (recommendations : Amazon.com).

And the owners, partners and suppliers won too. No manufacturing and storage costs and hardly any distribution fees, a miss sold is just another sale, with the same margins as a hit, no low demand or low sales volume products, opportunity to touch unlimited number of customers all over the world with large developed distribution channels.

And it is the future!
The virtual world is all around of us. We communicate (Yahoo, Skype, Tagged, Facebook), work, entertain and create (Youtube, My spice, Second Life), buy (Amazon, Fnac, Vante-Privée, iTunes, Blockbuster), looking for information(Google, AltaVista) in a digital environment and we spend more and more time there.
It is sustainable, yes!
But are we menaced by becoming the virtual ones with virtual entertainments and virtual friends?


And now, from my point of view, if I owned the virtual business I would develop and extend my affiliation politic that consist in developing a partnership with others sites which will play the part of opinion leader to its customers.

There are two advantages:
- increase in my site’s visibility on Internet with number of sites partners
- increase in visits and sales due to this partnership
- low cost, because partners are paid on number of clicks (only if the link is effective)



I think, I wouldn’t create a business model now, but I would give you a remarkable example of a new creative form of sale proposing advantage for everyone: customers, owners, partners, employees and suppliers.
It’s the fascinating success story of Vente-privée.com:
http://www.lepoint.fr/content/economie/article?id=179470