Pair each product with what customers already buy together

A spring plate from Basilius Besler's Hortus Eystettensis (1613). A good garden puts plants that grow well together side by side. A good add-on offer does the same.

The best add-on for a product is often the one that your customers already chose.

The study. Researchers from MIT and Harvard ran a field experiment with a large US online retailer of grocery and household products. Product pages showed a 2-item bundle with a discount on the add-on, and the type of add-on changed at random.

The finding. Add-ons from items that customers often bought together got the highest add-to-cart rate, 1.40% of bundle views. A policy that learned the best add-on for each product gave an expected revenue gain of 35% over the retailer's usual bundles.

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