Chapter 10 Estrategy
Chapter 10 Estrategy
10
Add-ons, Accessories, and
Complementary Products
I
n examining price structures, we quickly realize that products are rarely sold in
isolation. Rather, customers will purchase multiple items to use in conjunction with
each other to achieve their goals. When the purchase of one product leads to an
increased likelihood of purchase for another product, we can call these two products
complementary products. Add-on and accessory pricing concerns complementary product
pricing.
179
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180 Chapter 10 Add-ons, Accessories, and Complementary Products
Many products are the gateway to additional add-on modules or optional accessories.
Add-ons and accessories are found in tangible and intangible goods, durables and con-
sumables, and business and consumer products. For instance, Apple iPods and iPhones can
be accessorized with a Bose iPod docking station and speakers. Likewise, General Electric
(GE) washing machines can be purchased in isolation or in conjunction with a GE dryer;
and enterprise software can be purchased to manage a single business function or multiple
business functions with add-on modules.
When we identify a particular product as the gateway to the purchase of other prod-
ucts, we have identified an add-on or accessory pricing structure. Within an add-on
pricing structure, there are subtle effects arising from consumer behavior that can drive
changes to the pricing structure away from that which would be predicted from pure
economic tradeoffs alone. For instance, economic tradeoffs derived either from conjoint
analysis or exchange value calculators might imply that an accessory adds $5 to the value
of a product. However, some consumer behavioral effects and more subtle economic
effects may enable the firm to capture more than $5 from the sale of an accessory, and
other effects may drive the value differential between the base product and the acces-
sory to less than $5. Understanding these effects enables executives to improve add-on
and accessory pricing beyond that which direct price-level measurements would imply,
and target promotional pricing towards the part of the offer that will lead to the largest
improvement in profit.
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Chapter 10 Add-ons, Accessories, and Complementary Products 181
products. Add-on pricing structures may appear at first glance to be an extension of unit
pricing; however, further factors can skew the prices within an add-on strategy. With add-
on products, the price structure is also influenced by the potential to use add-on products
as a price segmentation hedge and the impact of complementary product sales on the sale
of the base product.
From a pure price segmentation perspective, one might expect the price of a base prod-
uct to yield a lower contribution margin than the price of the complementary product.
Add-on pricing structures can be a form of price discrimination wherein customers who
seek higher utility pay for that increased utility by purchasing additional features, and
customers who have a lower willingness to pay purchase only the core product and forego
utility-enhancing optional features. In this way, the base product represents the entry point
into the product category. A pure price segmentation argument with perfect segmenta-
tion hedges would suggest that the base product should be designed to yield the minimal
benefits required to satisfy customers with the lowest willingness to pay and be priced at a
level that would attract the largest market. Further add-ons, or complementary products,
would enhance the benefits of the base product and could serve as a means to capture
higher profits from customers with a higher willingness to pay.
However, price segmentation is not the only factor that influences an add-on pricing
structure. With complementary products, sales of the base product affect the sales of add-
on products, and vice versa. Furthermore, network, signpost, and competitive effects all
influence the price structure within an add-on strategy. Hence, there are many different
influences on setting the price and determining contribution margins of the base product
and complementary products.
The base product could yield small margins and the complementary products could
yield high margins, such as with computer printers and ink, or razor handles and blades,
as discussed in Chapter 9. Alternatively, the base product could yield high margins and the
complementary products could yield low margins, such as with tennis rackets and tennis
balls. Likewise, both the base and complementary products could yield somewhat equal
margins, such as with desks and chairs.
We can quantify the margin challenge mathematically. Let %CMA and %CMB be the
percentage of the contribution margin on products A and B respectively, where A is the
base product and B is the add-on product. In constructing an add-on price structure,
executives must determine if the contribution margins will be similar to that of a tying
arrangement, in which %CMA , %CMB, or similar to that of a two-part tariff in which
%CMA . %CMB, or relatively constant in which %CMA 5 %CMB.
Along with the challenge of defining the price and margin structure in an add-on strat-
egy, marketers face the challenge of defining which attributes and features should be in-
cluded in the base product and which should be developed as complementary or optional
features. The desire to penetrate a new market or respond to an economic downturn with
a lower price point may encourage firms to reduce the features in the base product and
offer them as options instead. In other situations, competitive pressures, market evolution,
and network effects may encourage the firm to take previously optional features and com-
bine them into the base product.
Determining which part of a set of complementary goods delivers higher margins, or
whether all complements yield similar margins, is a highly strategic issue subject to many
influences. We will examine how add-on price structures enable price segmentation before
turning to the influences on an optimal add-on pricing and margin structure.
Left out of this consideration is the possibility that complementary products will can-
nibalize sales of the base product. Such a situation would be considered as substitutes, not
complements, and the sales of substitutes tend to be negatively correlated while the sales
of complements tend to be positively correlated. Complementary products encourage the
sale of one another. As such, the price for one affects the volume sold of that item as well as
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182 Chapter 10 Add-ons, Accessories, and Complementary Products
the volume sold of its complement, and therefore the optimal price for the complementary
product. From a formal economic point of view, we would state that the cross-product
elasticity of demand, or the percent change in quantity sold of one unit with respect to the
percent change in price of another unit, is negative for complements.
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Chapter 10 Add-ons, Accessories, and Complementary Products 183
Travel
Charger 3
Travel
Charger 2
Traveling
Customer
Travel Mobile
Charger 1 Charger 2
Mobile
Car Kit
Charger 1
Nokia
6103
Charger
Adapter
Audio
Adapter
Upgrading
Customer
Connectivity
Adapter
Wireless
Headset
result would be what many customers refer to as a “gold-plated solution”: lots of features that
no one wants, at a price that no one is willing to pay. Not only would the profits be damp-
ened, but the firm would be left vulnerable to a lower-priced and lower-featured competitor.
With an add-on strategy, the base product handset can be sold to many users with
heterogeneous demand for additional features, and that heterogeneous demand for ad-
ditional features can be satisfied through the purchase of add-on products and acces-
sories at the customers’ discretion. Each accessory, or multiple units of an accessory, act
as a segmentation hedge, separating those customers with a higher willingness to pay for
additional benefits from those without.
Add-on price structures are highly flexible. As can be seen from the demand profiles,
they work well when the demand for features and benefits is highly heterogeneous be-
tween customers. Each customer can configure the product or set of products to his or
her liking, and few customers are stuck paying for features that they do not value. When
customer demand for features cannot be aggregated meaningfully into specific segments,
add-on price structures are often found to be the easiest to manage and the most effective
in capturing and satisfying customer demand.
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184 Chapter 10 Add-ons, Accessories, and Complementary Products
SIGNPOST EFFECT
The signpost effect argues for a low price on popular or frequently purchased products to
induce purchase of less popular or infrequently purchased items that are priced to yield a
higher relative contribution margin. It has mostly been explored in the context of multi-
product retail markets, as found with grocers, merchandisers, and office suppliers.3
The basic premise of the signpost effect is that prices on certain items can signal to
customers the price of other products. Furthermore, a signal given by a signpost item does
not necessarily need to reflect the prices of the other products accurately. Firms can use
the signpost effect to capture higher profits from non-advertised or non-sale items while
driving traffic with the advertised or sale product. The signpost item can even act as a loss
leader to drive traffic and sales of complementary items. While the signpost effect has been
studied mostly in retail store formats, it can be found in other situations as well.
The signpost effect arises from customers lacking full information of all comparable
offers. Even if all comparable offers were made apparent to customers, they may not
remember them accurately. For most customers, the effort required to learn all the prices
and offers available to them outweighs the benefits of doing so. Humans can be said to
be cognitive misers—they seek to store and recall information only to the extent that they
anticipate benefiting from the knowledge. Imperfect memory arises from the desire of cus-
tomers to minimize the effort expended to learn information with respect to the expected
benefits gained by knowing that information.
Because customers do not know the prices of all products at each retail location, they
will instead rely on an overall price image for the store in calculating their anticipated
utility for selecting one store over another. Prices of certain items can signal to customers
the price image of other products within a store. Pricing these items low acts as a signpost
to customers that the overall price image of the store is that of a low-priced outlet. Firms
can profit from the signpost effect when they signal a low-price image while maintaining
high prices on other items.
For instance, a customer looking to purchase a new tennis racket might first check the
store’s price on a can of tennis balls. If the balls seem low-priced, the customer may assume
that the tennis rackets will also be priced low. If tennis balls seem to be priced high, the
customer may walk out and seek bargains elsewhere.
With signpost items, retailers should select items for which customers are likely to have accu-
rate expectation of prices and are complementary to the main item(s) they seek to sell. The sign-
post effect relies on the ability of customers to identify and interpret the signpost item accurately
as priced favorably to induce customer interaction. Using popular and frequently purchased
items for signpost pricing increases the likelihood that customers will have accurate price expec-
tations. To drive sales to the main item, these signpost items should be complementary products.
The price signal communicated through the signpost effect does not necessarily have
to be accurate to be effective. Customers are unlikely to have accurate price informa-
tion on products that are purchased infrequently, such as furniture, stereo equipment,
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Chapter 10 Add-ons, Accessories, and Complementary Products 185
or computers. Firms can use low prices on popular or frequently purchased products to
signal an overall low-price image; meanwhile, less popular or less frequently purchased
products can be priced to yield a relatively higher margin. For instance, low prices on
advertised items can signal an overall low-price image, while margins on unadvertised
items can be maintained at a relatively higher level. The signpost effect will encourage the
sale of both the advertised item and complementary products.
Effective strategic signpost pricing has been observed under the following circum-
stances: (1) Competing stores are heterogeneous in their format, some having a higher
cost structure and others having a lower cost structure. (2) Customers are heterogeneous
in their store preference, perhaps due to location or product availability, cleanliness and
decor, customer service, or length of lines. (3) Customers select which retailer to purchase
from based upon the expected utility that they will derive from patronizing a specific store.
(4) Retailers signal their overall price image through advertised prices.
In these situations, stores can advertise the price of a select few products to increase the
anticipated utility that a customer will capture by selecting a specific store. Meanwhile,
they can sell other products at unadvertised prices that customers will discover only once
they enter the store. Such circumstances can even encourage higher-cost retailers to price-
match lower-cost retailers on advertised products to encourage store traffic, and yet cap-
ture profits through the sale of unadvertised products at higher prices.
Exhibit 10-3 BMW Z4 Base Price plus Optional Additional Features (2007)4
Base Suggested Retail Price for BMW Z4 2.5 si Sport Roadster, E85 €61,330
Options
Ruby Black Metallic Exterior € 2,180
Individual Imola Red/Anthracite Bi-color Interior € 1,530
Composite Star Spoke Wheels € 565
Comfort Package € 810
Hi-fi Sys Prof DSP € 1,455
Navigation-system Professional € 2,690
Electric Fold Exterior Mirrors € 320
Wind Deflector € 335
Cruise Control € 365
Dark Poplar Wood Trim € 320
Total € 71,900
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186 Chapter 10 Add-ons, Accessories, and Complementary Products
include exterior paint and surface, interior seat covering, interior trim, special wheel types,
air conditioning, navigation system, folding exterior mirrors, and cruise control. The full
price of the BMW Z4 changes substantially depending on the options selected.
Factory-installed optional equipment, unlike tying arrangements, does not require cus-
tomers to make purchases after the initial transaction, and therefore it is unlikely to fall
foul of antitrust concerns.
NETWORK EXTERNALITIES
Products are said to benefit from network externalities when the value of the product increases
with the number of people who use it.5 For instance, the value of Adobe Portable Document
Format (PDF) files increases with the number of people who are able to read a PDF file.
Similarly, email, mobile text messages, and online networking platforms benefit from network
externalities in that the value any one user gains depends on the number of other users in the
network. Network effects are a core strategic element behind Google’s Adwords and Adsense
offerings, Apple’s iPhone and iPhone Apps offerings, Facebook, and even Twitter.
The network effect was first codified by George Gilder with fax machines in the 1980s,
but it took Robert Metcalfe, co-inventor of the Ethernet, to popularize its consideration.
According to Metcalfe’s law, the value of a network under positive network externalities
increases with the square of the number of people in the network. This claim is rather
straightforward. Consider a network that includes n people. The value created by having
other people in the network for any given customer is proportional to the number of other
people in the network, or (n 2 1). Altogether, the total value of the network is propor-
tional to the value of the number of people in the network, n, multiplied by the value that
each person derives from the network (n 2 1), or n ? (n 2 1) n2 2 n. Thus, the value
of the network increases with the square of the number of members within the network.
Firms that are launching products that are expected to benefit from positive network
effects have a high motivation to increase the number of customers on their network
quickly. This may encourage the launch price of the product to be greatly reduced from
what it would be priced at in the absence of network effects to drive adoption. However,
firms cannot indefinitely deliver products without capturing profits. They must profit from
the network in some manner if they are to be expected to continue supporting it.
Network effects have led to the development of “freeware,” or freely provided popular
software offered in the hopes of developing a valuable network. With information goods,
the cost of creation is high, but the cost of reproduction is low, if not zero. As such, adding
more users to a network costs the firm very little, if anything. However, extracting value
for creating and maintaining the network can remain a challenge. Hence, many firms
offering freeware eventually seek revenue either from the users themselves or from others
who seek access to that network.
Network externalities can lead to aggressive pricing behavior wherein the base product
is offered at a low price, if not free, and profits are captured through the sale of com-
plementary products. For instance, the pricing strategy of Adobe was to give the Adobe
Reader for free to any user, but charge for the potential to create PDF files. Similarly, Apple
priced access to its iTunes music file management system at zero, but it charged customers
for downloading music through its online store. In these and similar cases, firms seek to
earn profits from the users themselves by selling upgraded versions of the product or add-
on products that enhance the product’s functionality.
Similar to capturing profits from users themselves through the sale of complementary
products, firms may also be encouraged to sell access to the network to third parties as a
means of monetizing the network. The result is commonly referred to as a two-sided market,
where one side of the market creates the network and the other side purchases access to
that network. Using network effects to create two-sided markets is a classic strategy of
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Chapter 10 Add-ons, Accessories, and Complementary Products 187
newspapers and magazines. Periodicals provide subscriptions at a price lower than the
marginal cost to produce those periodicals to create a reader base that advertisers will pay
dearly to access. Similarly, LinkedIn and Facebook, two popular online social networking
platforms, enable users to interact with other users freely, but LinkedIn sells access to its
database of users to recruiters and Facebook sells advertising space.
Summary
• When the purchase of one product leads to an increased likelihood of purchasing
another product, we can call these two products complementary products. Add-on
and accessory pricing concerns complementary product pricing. In an add-on or
accessory pricing structure, the price paid for a collection of individual products is
the sum of the prices of each of those individual products.
• Add-on price structures enable price segmentation by providing the base product to
a larger market and the add-on or accessory products to the subset of that market
with a higher willingness to pay for greater functionality.
• The signpost effect argues for low pricing of popular or frequently purchased
products in retail outlets to induce purchase of less popular or infrequently
purchased items that are priced to yield a higher relative contribution margin.
• The optional equipment effect argues for a low price of the base-level product
produced by a manufacturer and a relatively higher price for additional equipment
at a higher relative contribution margin.
• Network externalities can influence the add-on price structure. If the value of
the core product increases with the number of customers of that core product,
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188 Chapter 10 Add-ons, Accessories, and Complementary Products
manufacturers have significant incentives to increase the customer base for that
product. However, they must capture profits. To do so, they may either use add-on
products to improve the margins captured from their customer base or create a
two-sided market wherein other customers pay for access to the network.
• Complementary products can lock customers into a specific base product. If this
lock-in is significant, firms can increase the margins on their base products relative
to the margins that they capture with add-on or accessory products.
Exercises
1. Lou Malnati’s offers a 12” cheese pizza for $13. Optional extra ingredients include
mushrooms, onions, green peppers, black olives, sliced tomatoes, garlic, hot
giardinera, anchovies, or fresh spinach. Each additional ingredient is priced
at $1.70.
a. Consider the demands of a vegetable lover. How much would Lou Malnati’s
ask for a cheese pizza with spinach, mushrooms, and sliced tomatoes.
b. Consider the demands of a Mediterranean cuisine lover. How much would Lou
Malnati’s ask for a cheese pizza with black olives, onions, and anchovies?
c. Draw a customer segment demand profile for different optional extra
ingredients and identify the aforementioned vegetable and Mediterranean
cuisine lovers.
d. Discussion question: Why are add-on price structures commonly used?
2. A sporting equipment store offers a wide selection of soccer cleats, balls, jerseys,
and gloves. Research indicated that customers have more accurate expectations
of the prices of soccer cleats and jerseys than they have of the prices of gloves
and balls.
a. Which products might be suggested for use as a signpost item?
b. Where might the price of the signpost items be compared to competing
stores’—higher or lower?
c. Where might the price of the non-signpost items be compared to competing
stores’—higher or lower?
d. What metric might you suggest that the store managers use to evaluate the
effectiveness of a signpost-item price structure?
3. Triton Submarines LLC offers small submersibles that can take up to three
individuals 1,000 m deep to explore the ocean. Triton recommends the following
optional equipment as a part of the purchase of a Triton or Discovery submarine.
Each item is priced to include an “integration fee,” a fee directly charged by Triton
for integrating the optional equipment with the submersible.
USBL Tracking System with Acoustic Modem $52,812
Manipulator System $45,800
Doppler Velocity Log $17,250
High-Intensity Discharge External Lights X2 $13,645
Color Imaging Sonar System $15,000
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