Children's Preference for Television Programs: Long-Tail Evidence1

It has been hypothesized recently that many social phenomena and consumer choices are characterized by a long-tail distribution. We investigated the preferences of 4- to 8-year-old children in the domain of television programs, and found a long-tail distribution of children's preference, characterized by Zipf's law. We also found a high awareness of parents about the preferences of their children, even about those that they judged negatively. Our findings might have useful implications for the study of consumers' behavior and for research on complex interactions between psychological and socioeconomic factors.