Bundle promotions such as 'buy 4 for $10' and 'buy 6 and get $3 discount' have been frequently used for different product categories in the markets worldwide. Included in the bundle promotions are bundle packaging in which products that help achieve specific marketing goals (e.g., inventory control, brand exposure) are sold as one package and self-bundling in which consumers themselves construct a bundle of products customized for their own needs and preferences. Indeed, bundle promotions have contributed to substantially increasing the sales of imported beer products sold in convenience stores and large discount retailers in South Korea in a short span of time. On the other hand, consumers may seek greater variety from a product bundle as the number of products included in the bundle becomes higher. Also, studies on consumer variety seeking maintain that consumers tend to seek greater variety when their knowledge about a target is low (vs. high) and when exposed to self-bundling (vs. bundle packaging). The current research thus intends to investigate whether two popular bundle promotion strategies, self-bundling and bundle packaging promotion, have asymmetric effects on consumer variety seeking behavior depending on the level of consumer knowledge about a target brand.
Toward this end, we conducted an experiment in which 456 adults in China(72% males, 27.1 of age) recruited from the WeChat SNS participated in return for small monetary reward. The current research employed a 2(bundle promotion: self-bundling vs. bundle packaging)×3(consumer knowledge: low(specialty imports brand), medium(mass imports brand), vs. high(domestic brand)) between-subjects full-factorial design. First, the bundle promotion factor was manipulated by asking participants to either construct their own 6-pack beer bundle in the self-bundling condition or choose one 6-pack beer bundle from five different beer bundle packages recommended by a local retailer in the bundle packaging condition. Second, to manipulate the consumer knowledge factor, participants were asked to construct their own 6 can bundle(self-bundling) or choose one out of 5 different bundle packages(bundle packaging) while given a set of 3 domestic beer brands(Tsingtao, Harbin, Yanjing) vs. 3 mass imports brands(Budweiser, Heineken, Carlsberg), vs. 3 specialty imports brands(Schwanenbräu, Kaisarking, Boddington’s), that would represent the high-, medium-, and low-knowledge about a target product respectively.
After participants constructed or chose the beer bundle, they indicated the extent to which they had knowledge about a target brand, and the degree to which they were satisfied and confident with the chosen beer bundle for manipulation and control check purposes. Lastly, we counted a total number of different brands chosen from the given set of 3 domestic vs. 3 mass imports vs. 3 specialty imports brands of beer in the self-bundling and the bundle packaging condition, and then calculated the total variance among the 6-pack beer bundle so as to create an index for consumer variety seeking behavior.
As shown in <Table 2>, a 2(bundle promotion: self-bundling vs. bundle packaging)×3(consumer knowledge: low(specialty imports brand), medium(mass imports brand), vs. high(domestic brand)) ANOVA on the level of consumer knowledge revealed that the level of consumer knowledge about a target beer was greater in order of domestic, mass imports, and specialty imports brands, regardless of the type of bundle promotion. Similarly, the same was true for the level of satisfaction and confidence about the chosen beer bundle. Taken together, the findings confirmed that our manipulations were successful.
As shown in <Figure 1>, a 2(bundle promotion: self-bundling vs. bundle packaging)×3(consumer knowledge: low(specialty imports brand), medium(mass imports brand), vs. high(domestic brand)) ANOVA on the variety seeking index found a significant main effect of the bundle promotion factor, demonstrating that self-bundling was more likely than bundle packaging to enhance consumers’ variety seeking behavior. Also, the same ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of the consumer knowledge factor, indicating that participants sought greater variety from the specialty imports brands(low-knowledge) rather than from the domestic brands (high-knowledge) and the mass imports brands(medium-knowledge).
In addition, the findings showed that the level of variety sought was no different for the domestic brands about which participants had a high level of knowledge whereas they started to seek more variety as their level of knowledge about the target beer brands became lower. Most importantly, the findings exhibited that participants sought the greatest level of variety from the specialty brands of beer when they were able to construct their own beer bundle, providing supporting evidence for our main hypothesis that consumers who have a lower level of product knowledge would seek greater variety in the self-bundling compared to the bundle packaging condition.
In conclusion, the current research adds some meaningful contribution to the field of consumer variety seeing behavior. While bundle packaging relative to self-bundling can decrease consumers’ variety seeking behavior, consumer knowledge may moderate the effect. Also, the current research offers important implications about bundle promotions in that marketers need to take into consideration consumer knowledge when designing the right bundle promotion for their brand. For example, a retailer may increase the level of variety in the bundle packaging or simply run a self-bundling promotion when most consumers possess little knowledge about a target brand and thus try to seek greater variety from product bundles.
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