Eugenia Wu - On campus - Room T022

Marketing Research Seminar

Zoom link: https://hec-fr.zoom.us/j/98890209728

Speaker: 
Eugenia Wu
Associate Professor of Marketing - University of Pittsburgh (USA)

Title:
When and Why Bundling Two Material Goods Makes an Experience
Eugenia Wu, University of Pittsburgh (ecwu@pitt.edu)
Sarah G. Moore, University of Alberta (sgmoore1@ualberta.ca) 
Peggy J. Liu, University of Pittsburgh (peggy.liu@pitt.edu)
Daniella Kupor, Boston University (dkupor@bu.edu)

Abstract:
Although experiential purchases often provide better outcomes to consumers and companies than material purchases, little is known about how companies might increase experiential perceptions of material goods, and what implications this might have for consumer behavior. The authors introduce a novel approach to increasing experiential perceptions: Bundling together products that are moderate in complementarity—for instance, a coffee mug and a folding chair. Eleven pre-registered experiments show that bundling moderate-complementarity products offers companies a unique advantage: Bundling moderate-complementarity products prompts consumers to view the products as relatively more experiential compared to their non-bundled components, whereas bundling low-complementarity and high-complementarity products does not. This perceptual shift occurs because bundling moderate-complementarity products increases contextualization—the degree to which consumers consider the setting in which the products are used rather than the products themselves—and changes consumer behavior in various ways that can benefit firms (e.g., by increasing consumers’ likelihood of sharing information about the products with others; by increasing purchase likelihood when seeking an experience). Altogether, this research offers theoretical contributions to the bundling, material-experiential, and thematic relations literatures and offers practical implications for companies interested in obtaining the advantages of heightened experiential perceptions for material goods.