How Bundle Behavior Distorts Price Comparisons

 One often sees comparisons of internet speeds or prices across countries. Such efforts always involved methodological choices that obscure or inflate differences. 

The researcher has to choose one type of plan that is common in all the evaluated countries; convert currencies; adjust for differences in general price levels to determine “cost,” not just nominal price; ignore any discounts or promotional plans customers actually might use and then ignore the actual buying behavior (studying only the retail plans themselves). 

For example, a recent survey of Malta consumers found that 94 percent purchased product bundles. About 36 percent purchased a quadruple play package including fixed network voice, entertainment video, internet access and mobility services. Some 39 percent bought a triple play package including fixed network voice, internet access and entertainment video. 

source: Malta Communications Authority 

That illustrates the potential misunderstandings possible when comparing international prices, adjusted for purchasing power parity or not. What matters is the actual behavior of consumers, not posted retail prices. 

The simple fact is that very few customers in Malta actually buy a stand-alone internet access service. 

If, as in Malta, most people buy bundles, then the stand-alone price for any single service has little meaning, since few people actually buy those products. 

To determine what people actually pay for their services, when multiple products are purchased in a bundle, is guesswork based on allocated costs. One has to attribute costs to each product in the bundle, and each service provider might have different objectives, in that regard. 

It is rational to protect gross revenue for the product or products generating the most revenue. It is rational to protect profit margins for the product or products that generate the most profit.  The bundle itself is a primary way of doing so, especially when the bundle reduces customer churn. 

Bundle purchases also complicate, for such reasons, efforts to compare prices of products across the planet. It is misleading to compare stand-alone prices for a product when most customers do not pay the posted retail prices when promotional plans are in force and widely purchased.