Free Sampling, Bundling, and Digital Formatting: Exploring Strategy Effects of Digital Goods Retailers

Abstract

Retailers of digital goods such as e-books, online newspapers, and mobile applications often use strategies in multiple aspects. Meanwhile, they need to consider the interrelation between their strategies. Nevertheless, little rigorous research has been conducted on the strategy effects of retailers. Our paper makes an exploratory effort by investigating retailers’ bundling and multi-formatting strategies on their free sample size decisions. Drawing from the prior literature, we develop a set of hypotheses related to the interplay of strategies. We collected data about 316 e-books from a popular e-commerce platform. Based on this unique dataset, we conducted a set of regression analyses to test the interactions of retailers’ strategies. Our results show that retailers would like to offer smaller free samples for e-books with which retailers offer bundling options and audiobook formats with the same content. In addition, for the bundle design features, we find that the bundle size has a significant impact on the free sample size, but the recommended bundle has not exerted such impact. Overall, our research contributes new knowledge and presents practical insights for retailers to better manage their strategy mix. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved