Two-good two-buyer pure price bundling analysis assuming everything is sold
This page describes a simple situation of price bundling: two goods, two buyers, one seller, subject to the constraint that the seller needs to ultimately have both goods sold to both buyers. We will compare the following three scenarios:
- No bundling: The seller sells each good in a separate market, at a single price to both buyers.
- Pure price bundling: The seller practices pure price bundling, selling both goods at a bundle at a single price to both buyers.
- Perfect price discrimination: The seller practices perfect price discrimination, selling each good to each buyer at a price that could depend on that good and that buyer.
Our overall conclusion will be:
- From the seller's perspective, pure price bundling is at least as good as no bundling and at most as good as perfect price discrimination.
- Total economic surplus is unaffected by bundling as long as everything gets sold. The gains to surplus for the seller are cancelled by corresponding losses in surplus to buyers, and the losses are shared equally between both buyers.
Contents
Complications we assume away
This is a toy case. We ignore many complications such as:
- The possibility of using mixed bundling
- The possibility of monopolistic pricing to exclude some buyers (in order to get more from other buyers)
- Nonconstant marginal costs of production
- Complementarity or substitution in the production costs of the two goods
- Complementarity or substitution in the consumption of the two goods
Subtracting the cost of production
A simplifying assumption we will make for all our numbers is that we will subtract the cost of production from the prices. Alternatively, you can think of it as assuming zero cost of production, but note that that assumption does not lose us any generality.
With this convention, we see that the profit the seller gets from a particular buyer equals the price of the sale, and the total profit equals total revenue.
Nomenclature and invariance
We will call our two buyers and
and our two goods
and
.
We will denote by the maximum price that buyer
is willing to pay for
over and above the cost of production. Similarly, define
,
, and
. When referencing these values verbally, we will call them the "willingness to pay".
The four numbers can be conveniently put in a matrix:
We will assume that all four numbers are positive.
Qualitatively, what really matters for our conclusions are the differences and
. In other words, if we subtract a constant
from both
and
, the qualitative conclusions won't change. Similarly for
.
Our conclusions are also invariant under scaling all four numbers by the same positive value.
Conclusions
The three strategies
Type of situation | Seller's pricing strategy | Seller's profit from buyer ![]() |
Seller's profit from buyer ![]() |
Seller's total profit |
---|---|---|---|---|
No bundling | Charge ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Pure price bundling | Charge ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
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Perfect price discrimination | Charge each buyer the maximum the buyer is willing to pay for each good | ![]() |
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Comparison of the strategies
With some basic algebra, we see that the pure price bundling strategy generates a profit intermediate between the strategy with no price discrimination or price bundling, and the strategy with perfect price discrimination. The following are the edge cases:
Conclusion | Condition (verbal) | Condition (algebraic) | Condition (geometric) for 4-tuples plotted in ![]() |
Codimension and dimension |
---|---|---|---|---|
Pure price bundling offers no advantage relative to no price discrimination or price bundling | The higher-valuing buyer (among ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() |
Two diametrically opposite "quarter-spaces" in ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Codimension 0, dimension 4. |
Pure price bundling offers all the advantage of perfect price discrimination | The bundle is equally valued by both buyers. | ![]() |
Hyperplane ![]() |
Codimension 1, dimension 3. |
All three cases coincide, i.e., no price discrimination, pure price bundling, and perfect price discrimination yield the same profit. | The two buyers have identical willingness to pay. | ![]() ![]() |
Intersection of the hyperplanes ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Codimension 2, dimension 2. |
In other words, pure price bundling offers an advantage over no price bundling only if the buyers have opposite preference orders for the two products.
The full case analysis below will shed more light on the above breakdown.
Linear programming interpretation
We now discuss in a little more detail the interpretation of the above in terms of linear algebra. Our scenario is as follows. To describe a given set of prices, we need to look in four-dimensional space with coordinates for
. Every point in the positive orthant of this space (all coordinates positive) corresponds to a possible set of prices that the seller faces.
We will proceed as follows:
- Discuss the two cases that arise for one good at a time
- Discuss how this leads to eight possible interior cases for
,
, and the bundle, and the 6 of these 8 cases (2 types) that are actually possible
- Group the cases into types (math jargon: equivalence classes) and discuss the qualitative conclusions for each type
One good at a time
Projecting down to one good , we obtain a plane with coordinates
and
, and we are interested in the positive quadrant of this plane.
If the seller were selling just , the seller would price it as follows to sell to both buyers:
This is a piecewise linear function on the plane, and the boundary between its two piece definitions is the line . On one side of the line,
is smaller, so the seller uses that as the price, and on the other side,
is smaller, so the seller uses that as the price.
The two goods and the bundle together
Now let's look at everything together. We now have three dividing hyperplanes:
-
separates the space into two parts. The choice of part corresponds to what price would be used (
or
) if selling
alone.
-
separates the space into two parts. The choice of part corresponds to what price would be used (
or
if selling
alone.
-
separates the space into two parts. The choice of part corresponds to what price would be used if selling the bundle.
In total, we can imagine interior cases, based on what gets selected for each of the three bullet points above. However, only 6 of these can occur in practice. The two cases that are impossible are the ones where the same buyer determines the price on both
and
, but a different buyer determines the price on
.
In addition to these interior cases, we have corner cases (where exact equality holds for one or more of the equations above). We will turn to corner cases after looking at interior cases.
The role of symmetry
Note that we can interchange the roles of and
. We can also interchange the roles of
and
. Doing so could change the specifics but will give qualitatively similar cases. By grouping qualitatively similar cases together, we can identify the different types. Each of the groupings (called equivalence classes in mathematics) can have size 1, 2, or 4.
The taxonomy of interior cases
Case description | Number of cases of this type (equals 1, 2, or 4, because of the nature of symmetry) | Explanation for number of cases. We can think of this in terms of specifying the symmetry in terms of subgroups and quotient groups of the Klein four-group | Algebraic formulation (one line per case) | Conclusion on bundling |
---|---|---|---|---|
The same buyer has a lower willingness to pay for both goods | 2 | We can choose which of the buyers has a lower willingness to pay | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Bundling is irrelevant. It neither helps nor hurts. |
Different buyers have lower willingness to pay for the two goods | 4 | We can choose which of the buyers has a lower willingness to pay for the bundle, and we can then choose which of the goods that buyer has a lower willingness to pay for | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Bundling helps. The seller's gain from bundling, in the four respective cases, is: ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Total (2 types) | 6 | -- | -- | -- |
Full social surplus analysis: case where bundling helps seller
We consider the case:
,
, and
Item | Value for ![]() |
Value for ![]() |
Total value with no bundling | Value with pure price bundling | Increase from bundling |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Seller's surplus | ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Buyer ![]() |
0 | ![]() |
![]() |
0 | ![]() |
Buyer ![]() |
![]() |
0 | ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Total | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
We see that the gains in surplus to the seller come at the expense of both buyers, to an equal extent (though the breakdown per good is a little different).
The taxonomy of corner cases
We now consider all cases including cases where the point in question lies on one or more of the hyperplanes ,
and
. In principle, we get
possible combinations, of which 8 possible interior cases have been considered already. That leaves 19 cases. Of these 19, it turns out that only 7 can occur in practice.
Case description | Number of cases of this type (equals 1, 2, or 4, because of the nature of symmetry) | Explanation for number of cases. We can think of this in terms of specifying the symmetry in terms of subgroups and quotient groups of the Klein four-group | Algebraic formulation (one line per case) | Codimension and dimension | Conclusion on bundling | Conclusion on price discrimination |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
One good is equally valued by both buyers, the other is not | 4 | We can choose which good is not equally valued, and what buyer values it less | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Codimension 1, dimension 3 | Bundling is irrelevant | Perfect price discrimination helps on the unequally valued good and on the bundle but not on the equally valued good |
The bundle is equally valued by both buyers, but the individual goods are not | 2 | We can choose a matching of buyers to goods based on what buyer has lower willingness to pay for a good | ![]() ![]() |
Codimension 1, dimension 3 | Bundling helps | Perfect price discrimination on the bundle yields no additional gains relative to bundling |
Each good is equally valued by both buyers | 1 | No degrees of freedom | ![]() |
Codimension 2, dimension 2 | Bundling is irrelevant | Perfect price discrimination is unnecessary |
Total (3 types) | 7 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |