e3value user guide

3.5 Value offering and bundling

The collection of ports with the same role in a value interface is called a value offering. Each value interface has exactly one out-going offering and one in-going offering.

For an offering paid for in money, we need a pricing model that expresses the price of the offering in quantitative terms. The price may be fixed per offered value object, or per time period (subscription model). It may be based on usage or on performance of the supplier. The design of a pricing model is a crucial decision when desiging a value interface [7].

Bundling. Value offerings can be used to express bundling. Bundling can be motivated by the supplier and/or by the customer. In supplier-side bundling, an actor wants to offer value objects in combination rather than separately, because it thinks that different products sold in combination yield more profit than that if they were sold separately [2]. Figure 3.2 shows an example.

Figure 3.2:The offering of the railway company bundles food with a Train trip. The traveller has no other choice than to buy this bundle.

Supplier-side bundling can be less coercive for the customer than this. For example, McDonalds’ Happy Meal is a bundle of various software products that can also be obtained separately, apart from the toy. However, the pricing of the Happy Meal is such that the purchase of the whole bundle is encouraged, rather than a few of its components.

Customer-side bundling occurs if a customer requests two or more value objects in combination in one value interface (figure 3.3).

Figure 3.3:The Traveler bundles a Train trip with Food. These two value objects only have utility for the Traveler in combination.