The Long Tail Effect is built around the fact that businesses with distribution power can sell a greater volume of otherwise hard-to-find items at small volumes than of popular items at large volumes. Now new research is showing that online recommendations that are at the heart of the long tail effect could be creating a bunch of blockbusters and ignoring many, otherwise, worthy candidates. Warton researchers Kartik Hosanagar and Dan Fleder found that recommendations tend to drive consumers to concentrate their purchases among popular items rather than allow them to explore and buy whatever piques their curiosity, the two scholars suggest. Rather than give just about every item an equal chance of thriving, online recommenders “reinforce the blockbuster nature of media.” Read more at Knowledge at Wharton.