Book Summary
With the advent of the Internet and new technologies, the means of manufacturing and distributing consumer products (notably music, videos and books) have become so inexpensive and commonly accessible that they are decentralized and diversified to a great extent. Traditional manufactures built around old business models (newspapers, publishers, and music labels) are facing severe competitions from electronic commerce.
Consumers, now presented with unlimited choices, no longer gravitate towards “hits” or “bestsellers”, but delve into numerous niche markets and products that were unavailable before. E-commerce companies, such as Google, Amazon, etc, have been able to track customer activities online and use probability models to generate product recommendations and advertising campaigns.