Very interesting bit from Chris Anderson’s talk… 

On Amazon, the #1 determining factor for people buying or not is the comfort provided by complete information in the product listing (image of book cover, summary, reviews, metadata, etc.). The demand curve for books at Amazon falls off the Long Tail model for books where there is no book cover image provided or other key elements of the product listing are missing. Clearly, this information exists…both the authors/publishers and Amazon itself are leaving money on the table by not taking the low-to-no cost step of supplying it adequately. Not to be overly self-promotional, but clearly this supports the message we’re putting forth in our product previews this week: putting more control in the hands of merchandisers. It’s interesting that the rapid advances we’re seeing in technology actually bring people into the online selling process more, not less. We’ve heard a lot this week about customer ratings and recommendations (and Chris reinforced this nicely through examples of Netflix customer satisfaction being higher for releases that have been out longer and, hence, have more recommendation data available). At the same time, the Amazon example above illustrates that it really still is up to brands to stay in “control” even in a Web 2.0 world.