For those of us old enough to remember Garanimals, they were fun and funny ways to figure out which pants go with which shirts, for kids. The tiger tops went with the tiger bottoms, giraffes were in there as well, and I think rhinos. For kids who didn’t yet have a sense of fashion, it was a way to help them make decisions about what goes well together, though I suspect somewhere, the young Isaac Mizrahi’s and Tommy Hilfiger’s of the world were already radically mixing their Garanimals with their Toughskin jeans.
But Garanimals are not the only example of successful “choice” bundling. The combo meals that are offered at most fast food restaurant are in the same vein – most people want a drink, a main course, and a side (for breakfast, lunch, or dinner), so they offer specific combinations of them, so you just say “A” instead of a Coke, a Big Mac, and large fries.
This happens to be a rare case that touches both of the transactional sides of the “how” trap. The consumer has to make decisions about what to wear and what to have for lunch every day, and if “how” they make the decision is the result of a simple combination suggestion, that makes the day a little bit easier, not to mention that it doesn’t really matter “how” we go about making the decision. The other side of this is the merchant (or in the case of Garanimals the manufacturer), the “choice” bundle helps them in more ways than one. First, it’s an immediate up-sell, when you buy one Garanimal, you ought to buy the rest of the “outfit”, or at least another tiger. The other sales-side benefit is less time explaining choices to customers, which isn’t huge in some cases, but in others, it’s a lot of time.
That’s why I was so interested to learn of a the company/site Polyvore. Polyvore has both of the consumer and merchant/manufacturer benefits of choice bundling, but it takes both even farther. Polyvore is a site where people can post favorite clothing “outfit” combinations, with photos, on the site (very wiki-oid), and people can then click through them to see where they can buy them. But these aren’t just matching two tigers, these are higher fashion, shoes, skirts, tops, jackets, purses, clothing head-to-toe, which for the fashion minded grown-up, is very interesting. This offers a creative outlet for the shop-a-holic to assemble various creations and recommend them – and for the too busy workaholic, a time saver. On the merchant/manufacturer side, this is free advertising with strong up-sell messaging, and in the fashion world, the time saved on the store floor offering guidance to customers, could be substantial.
I suspect that we will start to see more of these choice bundle wiki sites across industries and I think that’s a good thing for everyone.
Now I am off to work, I will probably stop in at my favorite breakfast spot and have “B” this morning.
-Ric
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