Merchandising provides an environment that can be configured to meet the needs of the merchandiser and the current initiative. For example, administrators and programmers define project workflows, and they can control internal user access to assets and activities, based on user roles. Merchandisers use projects to manage assets. They use the asset interface to control product listing and pricing, and to create a variety of promotions.

To develop and deliver content and promotions to a commerce site, Merchandising employs some features of ATG Commerce and ATG Content Administration. ATG Content Administration tools simplify and track the creation and development of merchandising assets. Versions are maintained in a versioned database. Conflicts that are caused by concurrent users are flagged, and a choice of resolutions is offered. The deployed versions of assets (the versions that are published to the live site) are contained in a separate, unversioned database.

You can use Merchandising to support more than one commerce site. For an overview of multisite concepts and possibilities, see the ATG Multisite Administration Guide.

This chapter introduces the basic concepts, tools, structures, and terminology of Merchandising.