Bundling prescription eyewear options into easier-to-understand consumer packages is not a new idea. Optical chains have used this marketing concept for years, and many laboratories promote the technique to their customers, as well.

Traditionally, packages offered most often by optical chains is a frame and lens combination, usually promoted primarily as an economy benefit. In addition, both private practices and chains utilize children's programs. Bundling a child's frame and lenses makes sense to parents. Many offices use them, sometimes in a program designed by their laboratory, and sometimes as one they created themselves.

What about lenses only? As the variety of lens options has increased, some practices have concluded that bundling options makes sense. We recently surveyed laboratories, and were surprised to learn that relatively few retail offices are using this technique for upgrading patients into premium lenses. While it's true that a premium lens package can be expensive, considering the potential savings to the patient, the advantages can be significant. The benefits to the practice are also substantial. Equally important, bundling ensures that every patient has an opportunity to walk out with the most modern eyewear possible.

It's surprising that so few dispensing offices utilize package pricing because there are simply too many options to present to the patient. Adding to the dilemma is the danger that not informing a patient about a development such as AR or high index can result in the loss of the patient and their family if they later learn about the technology from a competitor.

Quoting individual fees for a string of add-on options can come across more like a sales pitch than professional recommendations. Adapting a bundling strategy can eliminate the need for tortuous explanations such as:

• "For $20.00 more you can have UV protection, a valuable health issue."
• "For $40.00 more, you can have aspheric lenses, highly recommended for your type of prescription."
• "Due to your active lifestyle, we recommend polycarbonate high-index lenses, which are $30 more than common plastic lenses."
• "The cosmetic appearance of your new eyewear is important, and we recommend anti-reflective coating. It is also a safety factor when driving at night and costs an added $75."

With the traditional pricing process, patients often decline one or more of the suggested lens options, simply because they are presented as just that, options. The auto industry learned the futility of this years ago.

The Car Correlation

Until about 15 years ago, car manufacturers would publish the base price for their various models and then quote a string of add-on costs for each of the desirable options such as white wall tires, radio, air conditioning, etc. Auto makers eventually figured out that they'd sell more profitable add-on features if they displayed floor models loaded with the desirable options and simply post a price list in the window showing the price for the car, as shown.

For example, when air conditioning was an option, many buyers chose to omit this costly add-on. Today, however, if you want a car without air conditioning, it takes a special factory order.

Adapting a similar stratagem to eyewear is easy. The proven method is to present patients with their options broken down to "good, better or best." This way, the decision is easier.

Top-of-the-line is "best" and incorporates everything the patient needs for their visual requirements and lifestyle activities. Consumers looking for a middle-of-the-road approach choose the "better" package. This provides fewer premium features at a lower cost. Lastly, there are always people with budget limitations, and the "good" package is the answer for such thrift-minded patients. The important point is that even patients ordering the "good" package get better lenses than they might have otherwise. And, remember that your presentation of "good, better, best" should always begin with the "best" package.

Problem and Solution

Don't make the mistake of limiting your optical bundling to economy package offerings. With the proliferation of lens options and the varying degrees of frame quality and features, it no longer makes sense to limit packaged pricing to budget eyewear. Instead, offer premium lens packages as well and allow patients to determine for themselves what level of quality and cost they want. Along the way, confusion about prices is overcome, and selecting from a laundry list of add-on fees is eliminated.

Wholesale labs were among the first to jump on the packaging bandwagon. Now some suppliers as well are positioning products in ways that help simplify selection. American Optical's newest point-of-purchase material, for example, groups offerings into categories. And, in the most aggressive posture yet, Nikon Eyes by Avisia, the new joint venture between Essilor and Nikon, is simplification of lens offerings into just three product offerings and nine price points.

As for labs, they too are finding new ways to make the purchasing and ordering process simpler. For example, Interstate Optical, a laboratory in Mansfield, Ohio, developed what it calls the Simplified Ordering System (SOS).

With the SOS, accounts choose between a premium high index package and a premium polycarbonate package. The only other decision for the dispenser and patient is the desired lens style (ie: single vision, FT-28, progressive, etc.). Interstate's technical lens managers evaluate each Rx and determine which lens will provide the best optics with the thinnest edges and the best cosmetic appearance.

Each package includes anti-reflective coating, UV and scratch protection, crystal polished edges, and a patient satisfaction/performance guarantee-all provided at a flat price.

One additional benefit is a special fee sheet Interstate provides for the customer to use in explaining each package to the patient (fee mark-up is, of course, determined by the doctor/dispenser).

Interstate also has a frame package program with a flat package price for any frame from two different frame lines.

All the lens packages include AR coating. It's a benefit patients can see and understand, particularly when demonstrated properly. Incorporating AR in the package promotes the practice and increases profits, while ensuring that the patient ends up with the ultimate in eyewear.

Creative Packaging Options

Another laboratory, Hawkins Optical in Topeka, Kansas, has a variety of eyewear packages. One is a Children's Eyewear Package designed to provide lenses and popular frames, each made of safe materials and priced as a unit. Parents like the pricing provided by a package.

Hawkins also has a Safety Eyewear Program providing the eyecare professional's patients with the same eyewear protection normally only available to employees of major industrial plants.

These are just a few examples of how progressive laboratories have created package pricing to help customers overcome the "sticker shock" that can result from today's profusion of lens options. It's worth the time to investigate what's available from your lab. Even if its packages don't provide exactly what you want for your patients, they may suggest ideas you can incorporate into your own customized packages.

Yet, even with packaged pricing, it's still essential to inform and educate the patient about what they are getting. To appreciate why "best" is better than "better," patients must understand the differences. A graphic demonstration is still the most effective way to get the point across, and most labs have access to effective demonstrating tools to help in this regard.

Here's a summary of what this modern pricing strategy, when combined with graphic demonstrations, will do for you and your patients:

Needs. Bundling encourages patients to order what best serves their individual needs.

Savings. When properly structured, bundling provides genuine savings to the patient.

Time. Bundling shortens time required for the dispensing transaction.

Image. Bundling dispels the appearance of "selling" lens options.

Referrals. The lens packages you create become unique to your practice and encourage referrals.

If you're dealing with a reasonably modern lab, you should be able to get help and guidance from them for designing your own lens packages. Essentially what you need to develop is a "good, better, best" package for single vision (one for myopes, one for hyperopes), a package for presbyopes, one for children, and one for sunwear.

Then modify the pricing of each package to make it appropriate for managed care patients. Do that, and you are on the road to better patient relations. And to improved profits. What a great way to start off the new millennium. EB