| | |  | |  | | | | | | A catalog is the basic structure of PL4E . It defines items and categories. One can define multiple levels of subcategories, each of which may have multiple parents. Each item may belong to multiple categories or subcategories. So this is a many-to-many relationship between categories and items.
When need be, an item may also be defined as a root item which means there would be no need to assign it to any category. | | | | A Category cannot be a subset of an item but an item can well be a subset of one or more categories or subcategories.
An analogy can be made between categories and items in one hand, and folders and files in the other hand. An item is of a specific class, the same way a file has an extension (.doc, .xls …).
As a folder can contain files of different extensions, so can a category contain items of different classes. However, unlike the file system, where a folder has one parent and a file can exist in one folder, a category can have multiple parents and an item can exist in many categories at the same time. | | | | PL4E is designed to manage multiple catalogs of various natures and make them co-exist (in the same shop) as long as it makes business sense. | | | | A catalog also defines the relationship between items, categories, or both. Examples of relationships are cross-sell, up-sell and others. | | | | Cross Sell | | | | To better understand Cross Sell, let us make an analogy with a clothing salesman:
As a customer considers to buy a shirt, a good salesman might suggest pants or ties to him. He may invite him to consider any thing that may interest a customer who may buy a shirt. This is called cross sell. PL4E enables the administrator to establish cross sell relations between items so that, when a visitor checks an item, the system suggests other items that are in cross relations with it. | | | | | | Up-Sell | | | | Taking the example of the good salesman, when a customer is about to buy a shirt, one might want to suggest to him a better one (a more expensive and more profitable one). That is up sell. PL4E enables the administrator to establish up sell relations between items so that, when a user adds an item to his shopping cart, the system suggests to him another item. |
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