Question

Topic: Strategy

Product Bundling

Posted by Anonymous on 11/10/2009 at 12:21 PM ET 125 Points
Looking to understand best practices (from a marketers perspective) related to PRODUCT KIT BUILDING where kit could have items that needs to be tracked for UNCLAIMED PROPERTY filing with the states in the United States...

For example - Say merchant A has a marketing dream of building product bundles that contains their core products says VITAMINS and HEALTH SUPPLEMENTS along with a GIFT CARD (can be used at the retailer) or ALBUM that could be redeemed for tangible products(Example: OrderMyGift.com). Marketing wants to have the Gift Card packaged inside the bundle for customer experience perspective. However, from a Finance perspective, we need to track what Gift Card/Album was purchased/activated, as we need to track the life cycle of this card from a escheats perspective.

From a fulfillment perspective, it is one item that is physically sitting in the warehouse, however there are two picks initiated, one for the kit SKU and other for the Gift Card, which also entails sending information back from Fulfillment application back to Ordering...
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 11/11/2009 at 4:10 PM Accepted
    Huh? I have read your question a couple of times, and I'm still not sure what you're trying to do or what you're asking.

    Sorry to be so dense, but this one doesn't sound like any marketing challenge I've ever faced. Not sure if it's just a semantic mismatch or a new/unique problem. If it's the latter, then there probably are not "best practices."

    Any chance you can explain some other way?
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 11/15/2009 at 12:06 PM Accepted
    Dear bpananghat,

    I'm also a little confused. But I get the general idea that finance wants one thing and marketing wants another.

    Here's an idea. Do both. Please both marketing AND finance by sending the gift card as a separate item, but one that's mailed at the same time.

    Or, someone on-high in your company makes a judgement call and either marketing or finance have to abode by whichever way that call goes.

    Or have the discount coupon e-mailed to recipients and tracked to the online store that way. This will make the card easier to track because you'll know when the card (or the card number) was activated and how long it took to redeem.

    If all your transactions take place on line it's not necessary to issue an actual card.

    But in the package that's delivered you WILL need some form of leaflet that directs recipients to a specific webpage on which they can activate and redeem the virtual card for use in your web store.

    All they'd need to do to claim the value of the card is input the card number into a field on the order form, a script then deducts the card's face value from the total and automatically tracks the ISP AND THAT disables that specific card number so that it can't be used again from the computer or the IP address that the order's been placed from.

    All pretty easy to do with a simple HTML or Java script which, if you can't do this yourself, you could do really easily with the help of a code writer on a site such as www.gur.com or www.elance.com.

    I hope this helps.

    Gary Bloomer
    Wilmington, DE, USA
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