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Sales catalogs
There are two types of catalogs in a WebSphere Commerce system: master and sales. A sales catalog is a subset of the merchandise and services found in the master catalog.
You can create one or more sales catalogs for customer display purposes. A sales catalog has a flexible display structure that can associate products to more than one category, to suit the requirements of the store.
Sales catalogs can maintain an unlimited number of catalog hierarchies and place products in any number of locations within a single sales catalog structure. Sales catalogs can be used to create unique hierarchies and product assortments for seasonal purposes, targeting specific customer segments or business customers. For example, you can create a sales catalog to highlight new merchandise, seasonal merchandise such as a Summer or Winter catalog, or a particular product line.
Sales catalogs can be used in conjunction with the master catalog and contracts to control which products display for a particular customer. If a customer is not entitled to see a subset of the products in the master catalog, the contract system makes sure that customer does not see those products in the WebSphere Commerce store. The sales catalog can then be used to organize the products that the customer is entitled to see and purchase in a more meaningful way. For example, customers can buy products to support a business project. Instead of organizing products by department and sub-department, it might be easier for the customer to find products when the products are arranged in a manner that matches the components of their project. In this scenario, a top level category might be titled Network Replacement Project and the subcategories in the sales catalog would be Hardware and Software.
Sales catalogs within the catalog asset store
You can create and manage sales catalogs within each individual store that you create. You can also create and manage sales catalogs within the catalog asset store when using the extended sites model. If you want the same sales catalog to be shared among each of the extended sites, add the sales catalog to the catalog asset store. You can still create a separate sales catalog within each extended site if you do not want every sales catalog to be shared. The diagram below describes this organization.
Display sales catalogs within a store
By default, WebSphere Commerce stores display the master catalog.
To display sales catalog in the store pages the store developer must configure the store to display sales catalogs. If the sales catalog is unavailable the store displays the master catalog.
Related concepts
IBM Management Center for WebSphere Commerce
Related tasks
Link categories between catalogs
Add catalog entries to sales categories
Add multiple parent categories to a child category
Add a child category to a parent category
Remove a parent category from a child category