Do the products that form the kit of a camera have different EANs?

Question

This question targets mostly the people that sell cameras. Sometimes the producer of a certain type of camera sells it together with a few accessories in a kit. I've done quite a few searches and I still don't know the answer.

I'm a developer working on an e-commerce site for a reseller. He asked me to write code that allows him to read the bar codes for his products. When he's dealing with a kit from a producer, he wants to read a single EAN for the kit and several serial numbers corresponding to each accessory. He's currently unavailable for a couple of weeks and I need this information: do the accessories themselves have distinct EAN numbers or do they match the camera's EAN? Can these accessories be sold separately?

Answer 1

Each and every product sold separately at retail stores should have it's own EAN code.

When combined in a bundle by the manufacturer, they receive a new EAN code.

An EAN code embeds the manufacturer's identifier.

The EAN code spec has a specified range that allows a retailer to create it's own EAN code valid only within that retailer. That could be used to bundle items together, but that code would only have meaning inside that retailer. It could mean something else at another retailer.

Answer 2

A bit of both; Sometimes a kit will consist of lenses in retail packaging, along with the camera body in an unmarked box, all contained in a single package. Sometimes the lenses will be in plain boxes. In either respect, each type of kit should have the same contents, for the same outer EAN.

Answer 3

For what it's worth, I've seen Lensrental.com offer lenses for sale with the caveat that since they came as kit lenses, they're not able to sell them with the same manufacturer warranty that normally comes with lenses. I assume that the manufacturer has a way of tracking this...