| Merchandising Fundamentals / Catalog Fundamentals | |
A catalog represents a collection of products that you group into categories that let your customers browse your collection of products.
A base catalog is a group of products organized from a collection of categories and products. Each catalog must have a unique name, and each product or category can appear in only one base catalog instance. The categories in your catalogs can have sub-categories, and products may appear in multiple categories. 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 customers navigate to the parent category, the child categories appear; enabling customers to navigate quickly to the category that contains the products they want. For example, you could define an "alternate" relationship so that when one product is viewed, another appears somewhere on your Web site page as an alternate suggestion.