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2.4.2 Sales catalogs Every store in the WebSphere Commerce system must have a master catalog. Only one master catalog can exist at a time, and multiple stores can share a master catalog. However, you can create one or more sales catalogs for customer display purposes. A sales catalog has a flexible display structure that enables you to associate products to more than one category to suit the requirements of the store. Sales catalogs enable you to 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 may have a Spring sales catalog, a Fall sales catalog, as well as a Gold-rated Customer sales catalog. You can manage the sales catalog from the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator and perform the following tasks: Create, change, or delete sales catalogs. You can create sales catalogs based on segments of the master catalog, or choose to create one from scratch. Create, change, find, or remove categories. Select new parent categories and rearrange the category tree structure for a new look. Link a category. Take a category from one sales catalog to another sales catalog. That category, and all of its catalog entries, will then be displayed in both, or more, sales catalogs. Duplicate the structure of a category. From the master or sales catalog, you can duplicate a section of categories and subcategories to preserve a similar structure. Assign, find, or remove catalog entries from different categories. 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 will make 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 may buy products to support a business project. Instead of organizing products by department and subdepartment, 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.

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