| NOTAS: | Service bundling is now a mainstream trend in Europe. A wide range of bundles is offered, including dual play, triple play and quad play - although the latter is still not common in Europe. The recent trend is for mobile operators to offer broadband in a bundle with mobile telephony. The most common strategic drivers for offering service bundles are concerned with customer retention: reducing churn and matching competitors' product offerings. Other important strategic drivers include raising ARPU, winning customers from competitors and using bundling as a tool in the broadband land grab. Customers are mostly interested in bundles as a means of saving money: if they already subscribe to the services in the bundle separately, they can pay less in total by subscribing to them in a bundle. Other important customer benefits include predictability of bills and convenience. Customers can also find bundles confusing, owing to the large number of variables in each of the service elements and the potential for 'hidden charges'. The various permutations make it hard to compare competing bundle offers, and can sometimes make bundles too complex. At the organisational level, bundles are typically handled by a dedicated unit at a marketing level. Recent entrants into the bundling market allocate revenues to the individual services' business units, whereas providers who have a longer history in the bundling market tend to move towards a single business unit. |
