The Practicalities of Multi-Channel Retail - Part 2 - The Product Catalogue

By having a single product cataloguing system, each channel can select specific products or categories of products from the centralised repository that best suit their requirements. This alone though does not necessarily meet the differing requirements of the channels in terms of presenting the customer with a meaningful navigational structure. Therefore, this catalogue requires the flexibility to have multiple mappings that allow merchandisers to quickly link products and form cross-sell and up-sell relationships as well as providing guided navigation through relevant taxonomies and facets (product attributes). This is a sound approach for the base level product data but does not necessarily provide the required flexibility for differing pricing and promotion models across channel. To satisfy this, an abstracted pricing and promotional model is called allowing the creation of independent pricing structures and channel specific promotions. This facility is absolutely vital should a retailer decide to provide any sort of white label model.