Catalog Pricing Rules

An ecommerce store will use catalog pricing rules to attribute certain pricing criteria to a group of products. This must be seen differently to cart pricing rules, where a discount is offered on a single product. Catalog pricing rules usually take the form of a discount on a particular product range. The rule will be set for a period of time—the vendor will decide for how many days, weeks, or months that the rule will be in effect.

Catalog pricing rules can be used to promote certain products or can be used to reward a group or type of shopper. The products can have multiple rules applied to them and these rules can have a hierarchical order. For example, a vendor may offer a 10% discount to all customers or a 20% discount for members of a loyalty program. In this case, two catalog pricing rules will be set. One will be a 10% discount to the product range to all customers and the other will be a 20% discount to customers who have signed up to a program that will identify them as a preferential customer. These rules can be applied together or separately, meaning that loyalty members may receive the standard 10% discount and an additional 20% discount or they will receive only a 20% discount.

Where multiple rules are created for a product group, the vendor will decide how the rules are applied and what their preference is in applying these rules. If a customer qualifies for more than one discount in terms of the catalog pricing rule, the rule can be set to only offer the highest or lowest discount. When setting up multiple rules for products, it’s important to distinguish how the rules need to be applied.