Amazon product bundling can be a great strategy for your business. It can attract customers away from the competition and bring them closer to checkout by providing greater value. A unique bundle is an effective sales tool, and we’ll show you here how to create one.
What is Amazon Product Bundling?
Product bundling is basically offering a customer the choice of adding another product – or more than one – to their order, usually at a discounted price. Together, as a combined whole, these products should offer a logical value to customers – not only because of the discount but because of their usefulness together – and are therefore an attractive purchase.
Amazon product bundling can be a great strategy for your business. It can attract customers away from the competition and bring them closer to checkout by providing greater value. A unique bundle is an effective sales tool, and we’ll show you here how to create one.
What is Amazon Product Bundling?
Product bundling is basically offering a customer the choice of adding another product – or more than one – to their order, usually at a discounted price. Together, as a combined whole, these products should offer a logical value to customers – not only because of the discount but because of their usefulness together – and are therefore an attractive purchase.
As with everything else on the marketplace, Amazon product bundling doesn’t work exactly the same way as it would on your own website or on a different marketplace. First, there are several different specific types of Amazon product bundles, such as:
Mixed Bundle
These consist of items that can be sold separately as well as in a bundle. They can be a bundle of either all branded (e.g. a Lenovo laptop with a Lenovo monitor, a Lenovo mouse and a Lenovo keyboard) or all unbranded items together (e.g. an unbranded quilt with an unbranded bed sheet set, an unbranded duvet cover, and unbranded bed sheet clips).
Cross Industry Bundle
These consist of products from different companies that go well together (e.g. a Cannon camera with a Kingston memory card).
New Product Bundle
This is the technique of bundling a newer product that hasn’t yet gained traction with a popular product to gain visibility (e.g. a top selling birthday cake pan with new in stock birthday candles and / or cake decorating equipment).
Gift Bundle
This is the technique of creating bundles that are ready to gift, eliminating the arduous task of thinking about and searching for gift ideas (e.g. a body wash with a back scrubber, foot scraper, and bath puff).
Convenience Bundle
These consist of items that resemble kits that make starting or engaging in certain activities easier (e.g. a starter pack for tropical fish or a kit of air travel essentials)
Amazon Product Bundling Policy
There are specific exclusions and guidelines for Amazon product bundling, and you should carefully read through their bundling policy before running off to create a bundle listing. Below, however, are some of the basic rules to note.
- must not combine branded and generic products (e.g. a Western Digital 3.5” hard drive with a nameless hard drive enclosure)
- must consist of different items – multi-packs of the same item, even variations, are not acceptable bundles (e.g. pants with a belt is acceptable, while pants in two colors or sizes is not)
- must consist of complementary items – items that are similar to each other and useful together (e.g. a yoga mat with a yoga DVD and a yoga book)
- must consist of products that enhance or ease the overall customer experience when sold together (e.g. a camera with a compatible memory card and / or carrying case)
- secondary items must add value to the primary product (e.g. a mop with a squeeze bucket and spare mop heads)
- each bundle must have its own unique standard product identifier or manufacturer part number
- must be listed in one product category only – usually the category of the primary product, which is usually the highest-priced item except where Amazon product bundling restrictions apply or the most relevant category to the bundle as a whole
- the referral fee is based on the category of the primary product – the product used to list the bundle
- Amazon product bundling components cannot be modified once created
- returns and refunds for bundles apply to the entire bundle – partial returns or refunds are not allowed
- items with separate manufacturer warranties cannot be included in bundles
How Amazon Product Bundling Helps
Win the Buy Box
First of all, simple by creating a unique bundle, you are immediately reducing Buy Box competition. By virtue of its uniqueness, your listing will be the only one for that particular bundle, and you will therefore have no competition and win the Buy Box instantly.
This cannot be maintained, however, since other sellers are allowed to hop on your listing or create their own, similar bundles, that may give customers a better option.
An Amazon product bundling strategy is therefore necessary to protect your share of Buy Box real estate. This is a lot easier for private label products, of course, since you have full control over branded product distribution. It’s a very good idea to develop a more exclusive type of relationship with manufacturers and suppliers for at least one specific item in each bundle to prevent the competition from copying your successful bundles.
Attract More Sales
Bundling makes shopping much easier because it offers several items all in one order – items that a customer would need to purchase anyway. It also offers them a lower price than if they were to purchase these items separately, and reduces the shipping costs for the same. On your end, Amazon product bundling gives you more keywords to rank for in a single listing because you have more than one item. This at least doubles your search engine visibility – more if your bundle is more than two items – and therefore your impressions and sales as well.
Note here that you have to be very careful about researching pricing before you create your bundles so that you are sure that you can remain competitive. As with any other new product you plan to sell, do your complete costing, and use the FBA calculator for your marketplace to check your pricing. You might also want to use a repricer and other tools to start right and remain competitive if you’re planning on creating several bundles that the competition is going to want to jump on.
You can even make your Amazon product bundling more attractive by customizing bundles for specific purposes. For instance, you can create a gift bundle of bath items that is packaged in a ready-to-present plastic gift basket that doubles as a bath item organization tool, or a travel convenience bundle that’s packaged in a foldable tote bag.
Move Inventory Profitably
When you have lingering stock of certain items and it doesn’t make sense to pay long term storage fees, you need to get rid of it. You could have it removed, but this would cost you extra for shipping. It’s a loss on top of the loss you’ve already incurred by not being able to sell. A good Amazon product bundling strategy is a more profitable way to dispose of problem inventory.
Sometimes, customers simply cannot see the benefit of purchasing an item on its own. Create bundles that put these unpopular items together with hot-selling items to move them more quickly, and without losing more money. If you have a good bundling strategy, you could stand to make a good profit even for these unwanted items. The key is to present the item’s value so that customers will want to make the purchase.
Another challenge to profitability is cheap items that Amazon is likely to label as an add-on. This can slow down sales on an already low-margin item. You can use Amazon product bundling to avoid this and boost sales at the same time. Bundling low cost items together can create attractive value for customers that may not have existed in the items as individual products. It can also increase your profit margins since Amazon fees are computed based on the bundle rather than the individual items in it.
Final Thoughts
Amazon product bundling can be a very lucrative selling strategy. Pricing is a major factor here, as always, so make sure that you keep a close eye on your individual item costs and bundle profit margins. Shipping is a big part of this, so carefully consider item weight when you are sourcing products to bundle or looking through your inventory for items to sell together. You could be killing your margins if your items are too heavy, effectively rendering your Amazon product bundling strategy null before you even create the listings.
If you need some ideas to get your Amazon product bundling strategy off the ground, start by thinking like a customer. Look also at the related products section on your listings and your competitors’ listings. Knowing what customers buy together with those items can help you create bundles that sell. Then go to your supplier and see what they have that you can add to your next order to start creating useful bundles.
