The super-hit effect and the long tail phenomenon in the context of electronic Word-of-Mouth

The proliferation of online retailers combined with recommender systems has facilitated the availability of various products and services through the Internet. However, the effect of this availability depends on the products' categories: in some cases, the web promotes the superhit products even more while keeping a short tail; however, in other cases, a long tail effect emerges. This paper investigates the coexistence of the superhit effect and long tail phenomenon from a quantitative perspective and proposes two different methods to mathematically indicate the presence of both phenomena in 28 different product categories collected from an eWOM (electronic word of mouth) website. The aim is to test whether the Internet promotes best-seller products, niche products or both. The findings reveal that eWOM promotes either the long tail phenomenon or superhit effect depending on the different product categories and that they can coexist.