The Long Tail strategy can be explained as the strategy of selling a far wider range of products instead of selling only the popular items. With the popular items, we mean the 20% of products that generate 80% of the revenues if the Pareto principle applies. Before the internet marketplaces like Amazon, Bol.com and Coolblue were online; the consumer bought most of their product in the physical stores. Due to limited storage and shelf space, these shops would only have the “blockbusters” in their shops. With the internet marketplaces, they can offer a wider variety of products because they have an unlimited amount of shelf space (It is only an extra web page). This enables them to offer the consumers more value because they offer more products. This paper tries to answer two questions: What factors are driving this change? What are its implications for the structure of markets?.

Supply-side drives: Internet marketplaces have the opportunity to lower their storage price below that of traditional companies. They can use a centralized warehouse in places where real estate prices are low; They do not have to have to be located in a shopping mall for maximum exposure. Because they can use one warehouse for a broader location of customers, they have increased economies of scale. With the use of print-on-demand that shop offers a way to reduce risks for not sold items (books), and can offer a more extensive products range.

Demand-side causes: Because internet mark places over more products it makes it also harder for the consumer to find the products they want. Here the internet marketplaces should provide useful search tools for the discovery of their assortment. The papers dive these in tools in active and passive tools. Active search tools are tools that give the consumer insights in other products when searching, while passive search tool gives the consumer recommendation on other products after it bought a product.

Over time this will effect changes in consumer tastes and demand patterns as a result of exposure to the new products. The IT tools used by internet marketplaces will allow the consumer to see products they would before never had considered. It is essential that the suppliers marketing strategies be also restructured to address the changes in consumer demand.

Brynjolfsson, E., Hu, Y., & Smith, M. (2006). From Niches to Riches: The Anatomy of the Long Tail. Sloan Management Review, 47(4), 67-71. Retrieved from http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/from-niches-to-riches-anatomy-of-the-long-tail/

Every hour 36% of the Universities in the UK is hit by a cyber attack, and In recent years, the
number of cyber attacks on universities has seen a significant rise. The question is why are universities such a desirable target?

There can be different sort of actors that have various motivations to break into the universities. The motives depend on the size and the intellectual property the University possesses. Foreign governments could be a threat when it comes to research data (i.e., nuclear research). But also smaller forms of cyber attacks are not uncommon. Cyberstalkers want to do reputational damage or ransomware could be placed for financially motivated attacks. That insider threat of current students that want to manipulate the grading system or retrieve exam information is also present.

The problematic challenges the universities face to protect them from cyber attacks is that they have characteristics that make them vulnerable. Freedom of information is the key to every university, but this also makes a place where a lot of open networks are connected with each other. Combine this with the fact that thousands of student and employees want to connect all their own devices to this network. The students or employees don’t have to be aware that their computer is infected and still will connect it. The organization form of the university does not help to form one barrier against threats. The different faculties can be running different IT security protocols, which makes it hard to establish one barrier.

How can Universities still try to protect themselves against these threats? The most important thing to do is that Universities centralize their IT Security protocols and make sure all faculties, also supporting, implement them. All the networks should be protected by the same standard of encryption. It should also identify the most valuable data and implement extra security measures for this data. After that it should create cyber security awareness under the students and employees, it can give out free malware detection software to users for their own devices. To end with, Cybersecurity should not be underestimated by universities and should stay a permanent agenda point.

EY. (2017). What cyber threats do higher education institutions face? | EY Advisory. Advisory.ey.com. Retrieved 9 October 2017, from https://advisory.ey.com/cybersecurity/cyber-threats-higher-education-institutions
Information Management. (2017). Why universities are so vulnerable to data breaches. Information Management. Retrieved 9 October 2017, from https://www.information-management.com/opinion/why-universities-are-so-vulnerable-to-data-breaches