Unbundling gets Re-bundled

Sunday marks the close of the ASAE & The Center's Research in Action: Super Trends Discussion on Unbundling. Click the red and black icon in the right navigation bar on my blog to learn more about this program. As I hope to do for each of the eight super trends, I've posted a summary of the two week discussion in the online community we're using. Here are a few excerpts:

A consistent theme throughout the conversation was what to do with intangibles. [Two participants] lamented how to place a value on intangible benefits, and how to unbundle essential association services like governance. Nobody seemed to have a solution for this. Is there one? The only option I see is to consider the intangibles as overhead and build the allocated expenses into the pricing of bundles.

I introduced a new term, rebundling, as an alternative to unbundling, but with the same effect. The idea being that instead of unbundling existing membership categories or types into little pieces to be purchased separately, consider what little pieces can be bundled with existing membership categories to offer consumers more choice. After all, choice is is what unbundling is all about.

If you're an ASAE member, and would like to participate in the discussion, just shoot an email to e-scan@asaenet.org and their staff will get you signed up in a jiffy.