Pricing assets

Pricing represents the price for a catalog entry and any criteria that must be satisfied in order to use that price. In order to create a functional catalog, add pricing information to the database. You can create pricing information in the format of XML files that can be loaded into the database using the loading utilities. Or use the Product Management tools from the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator for small amounts of pricing data.

The following diagram illustrates the pricing assets in the WebSphere Commerce Server.

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Offer

Offers, or pricing, are different prices for the same product or item to different customers or organizations. An offer represents the price of a catalog entry and criteria, such as the quantity to be purchased, that the customer must satisfy in order to pay that price. For example, merchandise or services are often priced differently for children, students, adults, and seniors. In WebSphere Commerce, an offer is also known as a trading position and is part of a trading position container.

Offer price

The offer price is a price at which catalog entries are offered by a store by means of trading agreements or contracts. An offer can have one or more than one offer prices defined in multiple currencies.

Trading position container

An offer is part of a trading position container, which is owned by a member. A trading position container contains trading positions. It can be made available to all customers, or to only customers in certain groups through the trading agreements or contracts, and the terms and conditions in the contracts. Under a contract, a trading position container is a price business object that can be referenced by multiple price business policies and can be shared by a store or all stores in a store group. A trading position container is also referred to as a price list. In some business models, you may have multiple standard price lists, which could be based on either cost, or on list prices.

Terms and conditions

Terms and conditions define the behavior and properties of a trading agreement. Many terms and conditions reference business policies because several aspects of a store's operation are defined by business policies.

Types of pricing terms and conditions

Pricing terms and conditions define what products are available under a contract and what prices the customer will pay for the products. At least one of the following pricing terms is required in a contract: The following pricing terms and conditions are available in WebSphere Commerce:

Customized price list

This term specifies that both the list of products for sale and their prices are customized for sale in a contract and their price is customized. Items are not limited to a section of the store catalog, they can be from anywhere in the store catalog.

Entire catalog with adjustment

This term offers all of the products available in a store catalog for sale with a percentage adjustment (mark-up or discount) from the base price as defined in the store catalog. If no adjustment is specified, items are sold at the base price.

Price list with adjustment

This term offers all of the products available in a price list for sale with a percentage adjustment (mark-up or discount) from the base price as defined in the store catalog. If no adjustment is specified, items are sold at the base price.

Price list with selective adjustment

This term is similar to price list with adjustment except the adjustment is not applied to the entire price list. The adjustment is made on a subset of the price list. The subset of the price list may either be a product set business policy or a customized product set.

Catalog with filtering

This term offers all of the products available in a store catalog for sale with a percentage adjustment (mark-up or discount) from the base price as defined in the store catalog. This term also offers all of the products available in a category, or a list of specify products and items, for sale with a percentage adjustment (mark-up or discount) from the base price as defined in the price list referenced by this term. This term can also state which categories, products and items are for sale or are not for sale in a contract. Category product sets will behave as a product set business policy. Item product sets will be customized products sets.

Dynamic kit component pricing

This term offers a dynamic kit for sale and specifies the adjusted prices of components within the dynamic kit. The adjustment can be specified as a percentage adjustment (mark-up or discount) or as a fixed price. The price of the dynamic kit is the sum of the adjusted component prices.

Trading agreement

A trading agreement can be a contract, an RFQ, a business account, or an auction. A trading agreement is an agreement negotiated between a seller and a buyer upon which the buyer is enabled to purchase certain items with the specified terms and conditions and the business policies stipulated in the contract. For example, it allows the customer to purchase products from a store at the specified price for a specified period of time, under the pricing terms and conditions In WebSphere Commerce, all customers must shop in a store under a contract, A store may deploy one or more contracts and one of them can be designated to be the default contract. A default contract contains a set of terms and conditions that are associated with a set of store default policies. A trading agreement may contain zero or more participants of different roles.

Participant

A participant can be part of either a trading agreement or terms and conditions. A participant is a member which can be a member group, an organization, and so on. If a participant of a buyer role is specified for a contract, a buyer must be a member of the buyer participant in order to shop under the contract. The terms and conditions in the contract can also contain zero or multiple participants.

Participant role

A participant can have one of the following participant roles:

  • Creator

  • Seller

  • Buyer

  • Supplier

  • Approver

  • Account holder

  • Buyer contact

  • Seller contact

  • Attorney

  • Administrator.

Contract

A contract contains the offer price for the product. In WebSphere Commerce, all customers must shop under a contract. A contract allows the customer to purchase products from a store at the specified price for a specified period of time, under the terms and conditions, and business policies, stipulated in the contract. A store owns zero or more contracts, and owns at least one default contract.

Business policy

Business policies are sets of rules followed by a store or store group that define business processes, industry practices, and the scope and characteristics of a store or store groups offerings. Business policies are enforced with a combination of a one or more business policy commands that implement the rules of the business policy, a reference to a business object that the rules act on, and a set of properties to configure the operation of the business policy commands.

Price policy

A price policy contains a reference to a price list and can be associated with multiple business policy commands that define how the business policies will be implemented on the price lists. The policy may be defined for a store or a store group. If the policy is registered for a store group, then the policy may be used by all stores in that group.

Catalog entry shipping

Catalog entry shipping information includes information about how the product is packaged for shipping. Each catalog entry can have different types of shipping information defined. For example, the height, weight, and length of the product when packaged.

Other pricing assets

The following assets are associated with pricing:

Member

A member who owns the trading position container. A trading position container only has one owner.

Store

A store is a store entity. A store must belong to a store group.

Store entity

A store entity represents a store in the WebSphere Commerce Server database.

Catalog

A catalog contains catalog entries that will be referenced in a contract. The catalog contains all hierarchical and navigational information for the online catalog and is a collection of catalog groups and catalog entries that are available for display and purchase at an online store.

Catalog group

A catalog group, or category, are generic groupings of catalog entries, created for navigational and catalog partitioning purposes. A catalog group belongs to a catalog and may contain more than one catalog group or catalog entries. You can associate catalog groups to more than one catalog.

Catalog entry

A catalog entry represents orderable merchandise in an online catalog. Catalog entries belong to catalog groups. An offer is always associated with one catalog entry.

Related concepts

Related tasks

Related reference