CONSUMER GOODS & "THE CURVE"

Some more folks are beginning to look at "The Curve" as a lens through which to observe consumer consumption in more than just the media space.

Makes sense, as the cost of production and distribution drop, and goods become mass produced commodities in many more areas than just entertainment.

Much more about it on the LEADSExplorer website, which has multiple entries on the matter.  The first of which points out:

Similarities with Infant Mortality and Burn-in distributions

- An infant mortality period with a decreasing failure rate
- Followed by a normal life period (”useful life”) with a low, relatively constant failure rate
- Concluding with a wear-out period that exhibits an increasing failure rate.

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These curves are called Weibull distributions.  Used in Operation Research for addressing production and operational problems.

If you would tweak the parameters you could produce a curve very similar to the Warshaw curve, as there are enough parameters to play with.

So far for the maths.

Other examples of Warshaw curve

Low-End content:
- Flickr or Stock.XCHNG (high quality!)
- Blogs
- Free amateur adult content
- Product white paper of company

Medium content:
- Sony ImageStation has been closed - business model was: “paying” by receiving emails from Sony
- Newspapers, industry magazines with registrations allowing them to email the readers.
- Adult content portal websites linking to many other websites.
- White paper syndications: registration required

High-End content:
- Getty Images
- Newspapers with subscriptions
- Paid adult content
- Paid white papers and market surveys by research organizations: Forrester, IDC, Gartner, Jupiter, Ovum, Bloor, …

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AGAIN, MORE FROM THIS POST AND A FOLLOW-UP POST THAT DIVES DEEPER CAN BE FOUND ON LEADSExplorer.