Commercial Bundling

[Asgaard <asgaard@sos.sll.se>]

A few days ago Eallensmith forwarded an article, which has lots of
references to economic scientific sources, by Andrew Odlyzko, AT&T:
'The bumpy road of electronic commerce'.

I didn't know that there is a whole theory of why and when and
how bundling of products work in commerce (but I should have guessed).

Soon after this article, published August 9, arguing why bundling
and subscriptions will take the lead over intelligent agent shopping
and personalized micro-retrievement on the net, came the following
announcement (quoting Edupage) from MS:

>Microsoft has struck deals that will allow it to bundle the Wall Street
>Journal's Interactive Addition and ESPN Sports Zone into its new version
>3.0 of Internet Explorer browser software ...

A networked computer with a bundled MS operating sytem, and a browser
already pointing to streamlined information. What more do we need?

This really fits in with Odluzko's predictions, and there is more to
come. According to Odluzko, bundling is not an evil but actually
does good for everyone, mostly (as does different prizes for different
customers). And most of us seem to prefer flat rates to pay-per-access.

He doesn't mention anything about the coming black market (of
crypto-anarchistic flavor), but then it isn't the subject of his
essay. 


Asgaard