The effects of price bundling on consumer evaluations of product offerings

The bundling of multiple products or components at a set price has become a popular marketing strategy. Although little is known of how bundled price information should be presented to consumers, mental accounting principles provide guidelines. These principles suggest that more positive evaluations should result from bundling or integrating component prices into a single price and debundling or segregating component discounts into a set of discounts. A study is reported in which consumers were presented an offer for an automobile and then asked to evaluate their satisfaction with the offer, likelihood of recommending, and likelihood of repurchasing the brand. The study supports the predictions as all three evaluations increase when price information is bundled and price discount information is debundled. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.