Customer-specific Assortments – Individual and Dynamic
Every customer is different and has individual needs or an individual contract, which also reflects in the selection of products. To create customer-segment-specific views of catalogs and products, Intershop provides the catalog views feature. However, the demand for personalization rises to a point where catalog views are no longer sufficient for special projects. Therefore we introduced a new approach: Customer-specific assortments. Based on the search index, they allow a more flexible configuration without performance loss and thousands of different views, individually for each customer.
What Does the New Feature Do?
Basically, product attributes are compared with customer attributes:
In the following, we will focus on two common options of comparing product attributes with customer attributes:
1. Customer-specific Products
Use case: The shop has a general assortment for all customers. In addition, there are products which are especially made for one (or very few) customers.
In this scenario Alfred has the ID c_111 and all products where the attribute Customer_ID is c_111 or ALL will be visible for Alfred. According to the search query, Alfred will not see the Dell monitor (see picture above).
2. Customer-specific Product Exclusions
Use case: Similar to the previous one. A shop has a general assortment for all customers. However, some products should be hidden for some customers, e.g., because this has been contractually agreed. To achieve this, you can either exclude products or customers:
Exclude Products
In this example we will exclude a certain brand. Patricia has the ID c_222 and the first three products have the attribute Customer_ID with the values c_222 or ALL. Hence these products are visible to Patricia. Although the last product has the Customer_ID with the value ALL it will not be displayed to Patricia, as she has the additional attribute exclude_brand ACER.
Exclude Customers
In this last example we will exclude a certain customer. According to the product attribute Customer_ID, the last two products will be visible to Bernhard. As the second product has the additional attribute Customer_ID_excl with the value C_333, this product will not be displayed to Bernhard as he has the ID c_333.
Infinite Possibilities
With customer-specific assortments it is possible to create highly individual assortments, much more fine-grained than with catalog views. Additional options like comparing product attributes, customer IDs, customer attributes or category attributes allow you to customize your shop exactly to your needs and those of your customers – without performance loss.
To get started with the feature for yourself, refer to the following document for details:
Do you have any questions or feedback about customer-specific assortments? Get in touch with our experts.