What is a product bundle?

A product bundle is several products offered together as a single unit of purchase, with its own name, product page and price. The price is usually lower than the sum of the parts, and the customer makes one decision instead of several.

Bundles come in two types that behave completely differently in the warehouse. A manufacturer's bundle arrives from the supplier as a finished, indivisible set; it has its own SKU, its own EAN code and its own stock level, so systems treat it like any other product. A virtual bundle is assembled by the store from products it also sells separately: the customer sees one package, but is in fact buying several items that have to be handled one by one.

The economics of a bundle rest on a trade. The unit margin drops, because the price is lower than the sum of the parts, and a larger number of transactions has to earn it back. On top of that come decisions that are easy to forget while planning a promotion: how stock systems know how much of each component is left, and what happens when a customer wants to return only part of the set.