Reading Reflection No. 2

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson

1) This book explained a new trend in business concepts, known as the long tail. Amazon is perhaps the best example of this structure, whereby they make profit selling a large quantity of items at smaller volumes. Other popular items are critical in generating traffic to your business. 

2) This class (for me) is centrally based around our business concept. Healthy fast-food is not going to survive with the long tail, as it will lead to more food waste then is reasonable for an already expensive product. The book was facinating and other fast food restaurants have taken its queue, from mozzarella sticks at McDonald's to tacos at Hardee's, restauarants that provide food as cheaply as possible will not mind a little more waste. These are the things I thought about while reading it and it did not make for an efficient reading process.

3) Open a general store and see how selling various items (pre-chosen with financials provided) would affect the store's income. This might take a while to construct, but I think it would be both fun and educational. 

4) The biggest aha moment from me came from reading the reviews of this book, with particular emphasis on renowned economists. I thought several times in the book that the author came off as a little arrogant, especially with regards to the the success of his article, and to see that many of his studies or assumed numbers (percentages) for these models made little sense. It is an interesting concept, but I have no interest in reading anything that man has to say again.