Define product families

Product families in censhare PIM allow you to create groups of products that share some common characteristics, for instance concerning their technical specifications, target customer group, pricing concepts or advertisement strategies. This article explains the concept of "Product family" in censhare PIM and how you can work with product family assets, for example to create product flyers.

Target groups

• Solution administrators

Purpose

To create families of products that share some common scope and can therefore be promoted together as a package or in a product flyer.

Context

• The asset represents the "product family "node in a PIM-specific asset structure.

• The asset holds relations to products that form the product family and share some common characteristics.

Prerequisites

None

Introduction

In censhare PIM, product families are an additional way of aggregating products. Product families help you promote your products more efficiently by increasing the recognition value of your products and your customer loyalty. In a product family, you can aggregate products that fulfill similar customer strategies, such as sharing the same value classes or that are targeted as brand extensions.

Differences between product category, product family, and product series

Product categories, next to products and product properties form the basic asset structure in censhare PIM. Product categories organize products by type and functionality. For instance, as an audio manufacturer you may provide headphones and speakers as product categories on your website. These can have several sub-categories like in-ear or noise-cancellation for headphones, portable or multi-room for loudspeakers.

Across these categories, you may then select any product assets to freely define a product family. For instance, create a product family “High quality” and promote all headphones and loudspeakers that fulfill sophisticated customer needs in one section on your website.

Product series are a further alternative in censhare PIM of aggregating products independently or in addition to product categories and product families. A product series can be seen as a set of products among a product category that share specific features. For the audio company these might be all headphones offering wireless, for example.

Define a product family

As a manufacturer of cosmetics for instance, you might want to promote a product family “Sensitive”. In your PIM system, eligible products for this family are stored in such diverse product categories as "Body care", "Face care", "Hair care", or "Sun protection". For this purpose, you may create a product family asset "Sensitive" and add relations of type "product" to all of your products that, for instance, contain aloe vera, or that use few ingredients. In further steps, you may use the “Sensitive” product family for you marketing campaigns.

The Product family asset creates an XML output of the aggregated data from all the assigned products which can be transformed into a product flyer, brochure or landing page. With a layout snippet created accordingly, you can drop the product family asset onto the layout boxes of your layout. The output (PDF, web page, etc.) is then rendered automatically. This saves time and makes your layout reusable for any kind of product family.

Asset structure

The asset type "product family" offers the possibility of grouping products independently of product categories. A product family can contain any selection of products. Products do not have to be grouped hierarchically.

In censhare PIM, the asset structure of a product family asset is as follows:

Product family asset page - tabs and widgets

The following sections describe which tabs and widgets are created in the product family asset and vital for the data or relations you can display and create there. Where configuration is necessary, this is indicated. The tabs "Details", "Communication", "History", and "Administration" are standard tabs for almost any asset type in censhare. They are not described in this context.

Note: You need the respective permissions and knowledge to configure these widgets.

Next steps

Use the combined data of the products in other applications or outputs, for example in a layout or web page.