Catalog Hierarchies and Relationships

While the catalog definition provides the underlying structure for the catalog, you create catalog hierarchies and relationships to organize the products in your catalog and make it easier for users to navigate to the products they want. You can create category hierarchies and relationships among categories and products that are in the same catalog, or in different catalogs.

For example, if you have a large catalog, you can create a parent category that includes several other categories, known as child categories. When users navigate to the parent category, the child categories appear; enabling users to quickly navigate to the category that contains the products they want.

Primary Parent Category

Each category and product can have one primary parent category. The primary parent category provides a canonical path to a child category or product. In addition, if a product is in more than one category, and pricing is set at the category level, only the pricing from the primary parent category is applied to the child categories and products. (You can set pricing at the category level by using either category-level pricing or a virtual catalog price rule on the category.)

The following figure shows how a parent category can have several child categories, and how each child category can also be a parent category.

In the previous figure, the Sports Clothes Catalog has two categories: Shirts and Pants. The Shirts category has two child categories: Soccer Shirts and Two-piece Track Suits. This organization gives users two paths to the Two-piece Track Suits category. They can navigate to Track Suits through the Shirts category or through the Pants category.

The previous figure also shows an accessory relationship between Ace Soccer Shirt and Ace Soccer Shorts. If users are interested in the shirts, they might also be interested in the shorts.

See Also

Creating Category Hierarchies

Creating Category and Product Relationships

Best Practices for Catalogs

Catalog Name and Size Restrictions

Copyright © 2005 Microsoft Corporation.
All rights reserved.