Bundling in this era of eCommerce and high technology is a potent and widespread selling tool. The literature has focused on three static bundling strategies under which the products are sold separately (pure components or PC) or only in a bundled form (pure bundling or PB) or both (mixed bundling or MB). In a generalization, and motivated by real world examples, this paper examines the relative effectiveness of temporal bundling. We consider a firm that sells to a market of myopic and strategic consumers, and a selling season consisting of two stages. We compare four strategies – PC-PC (i.e., pure components in each of two stages), PB-PB, PB-PC and PC-PB – relative to MB. Our results show that PB-PB maximizes profits under low marginal costs; PC-PC prevails under high marginal costs given a large proportion of myopic consumers; and PB-PC is profit maximizing under moderate marginal costs when most consumers are strategic. These temporal strategies dominate MB except when the market is comprised entirely of strategic consumers. Finally, while temporal mixed bundling – MB-MB – is weakly superior to other temporal strategies, the latter are much easier to implement, as shown by real-world uses, and suffice to capture most of the profits. Related interesting pricing implications are discussed. Three extensions to the main model are also proposed.

中文翻译：

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与近视和战略性消费者捆绑的临时产品：表现和相对有效性

在电子商务和高科技时代，捆绑销售是一种强大而广泛的销售工具。文献集中在三个静态捆绑策略，在这种策略下，产品分别（纯组件或PC）或仅以捆绑形式（纯捆绑或PB）或两者（混合捆绑或MB）出售。概括地说，并以现实世界中的例子为动机，本文考察了时间捆绑的相对有效性。我们考虑一家向近视和战略消费者市场出售产品的公司，其销售季节包括两个阶段。我们相对于MB比较了四种策略– PC-PC（即，两个阶段中每个阶段都是纯组件），PB-PB，PB-PC和PC-PB。我们的结果表明，PB-PB在较低的边际成本下实现了利润最大化；考虑到近视消费者的比例很大，PC-PC在高边际成本下占优势。当大多数消费者具有战略意义时，PB-PC会在边际成本适中的情况下实现利润最大化。这些临时策略主导了MB，除非市场完全由战略消费者组成。最后，虽然时间混合捆绑（MB-MB）在弱于其他时间战略上胜于其他时间战略，但现实世界中的使用表明，后者更容易实现，并且足以获取大部分利润。讨论了相关的有趣定价含义。还提出了对主模型的三个扩展。