Observation. Long-tail boutique shops curate interesting content for their niche customers. Said customers buy this content from large aggregators like Amazon due to lower price or delivery advantages. Essentially the long-tail boutique shops serve as “free” advertising for the aggregators.
This was the same in the early e-commerce wave of brick/mortar specialty stores being eviscerated by websites due to customers going to brick and mortar to physically touch and view merchandise only then buy it online for a cheaper price. For example, Fry’s Electronics, Best Buy, Sears, etc suffered from this trend.
Hence, the new trend toward “influencers” on social media who demonstrate products and provide referral links to the big aggregators instead of selling the product themselves. Some of these influencers are able to brand their own products to make even more money, but they are in the minority.
This was the same in the early e-commerce wave of brick/mortar specialty stores being eviscerated by websites due to customers going to brick and mortar to physically touch and view merchandise only then buy it online for a cheaper price. For example, Fry’s Electronics, Best Buy, Sears, etc suffered from this trend.
Hence, the new trend toward “influencers” on social media who demonstrate products and provide referral links to the big aggregators instead of selling the product themselves. Some of these influencers are able to brand their own products to make even more money, but they are in the minority.