Zen Cart product bundles
Just thinking loud, but would there be interest in product bundles for Zen Cart (via ZenMagick)?
There seem to be people looking for that and the available commercial mods are priced higher than a few commercial carts that are out there.
it sounds like an interesting project and would certainly be good to show of the capabilities of ZenMagick if it could be done entirely as a plugin.
I’d be really interested in getting some feedback about what such a plugin should be able to do.
Of the top of my head I can think of the following (split up into store and admin):
store
- separate template to display bundle information (optional)
- being able to buy just like a regular product
admin
- create bundles like regular products
- assign existing products to bundle
- allow to bundle products that are not available as single items
- price helper to display the regular total of bundle items compared to the bundle price
What else?
EDIT: Perhaps I should emphasise the fact that it is actually possible to use ZenMagick with your existing zen-cart installation! The storefront templating stuff is all optional, although it is the default 
This would be fantastic! Everything that you mentioned is spot-on. It should create a new product code so it can be added to the cart. I would like to see a user be able to select different options, like using attributes but instead of attributes they are individual products that exist in the cart system, and based on the selections the price is updated using javascript and a new product code is generated.
For instance, a user can select a drum shell size, the wood used in the drum shell, the type of finish, the type of hardware(drumheads, hoop style, lugs, etc), and the type of plating. The price is updated with each new selection so the user can see the price right there on the page, and when they click add to cart the new product is created using all of the products they selected.
Keep up the great work! It is amazing what you are doing!!
Comment by lankeeyankee — December 16, 2008 @ 4:14 pm
A module to allow bundling of products to offer sales incentives would be a great marketing tool for our business — please keep me posted abt any such developments.
The best way to reach me is via email with a phone number where I might be able to speak with you in person.
Comment by Kevin Kirshner — January 5, 2009 @ 8:32 pm
@lankeeyankee: What you describe is more like a product builder. Bundles would be more static and just a convenience for the seller.
I think there is a zen cart mod to allow putting together a custom PC – chose from a list CPUs, memory, etc. I haven’t looked at that, though.
One think I am not sure about is how to treat sales. Say, for example, a bundle consisting of a PC and monitor is sold. Does that affect the inventory of the single PC and monitor or just the bundle?
I think there are two slightly different scenarios:
1) Bundles are used as marketing tool like Kevin says. In this case bundles would be really virtual and not actually exist. Then, selling a bundle should mean decreasing the stock count of the bundle items, I think.
2) Bundles exist as physical products. In this case bundles would be like any other product and the only advantage would be that a separate template would make it easier to provide additional information about the bundle items (links to the individual products)
There are a few things that I still need to figure out here:
* There should possibly be a new flag to allow displaying a product but prevent buying it
* In the case of the first scenario, stock level checking would probably need to take into account the stock level of bundle items
Comment by DerManoMann — January 5, 2009 @ 10:05 pm