Shopper profiles include a predefined set of properties that store information about shoppers at your store. These properties include common shopper data, such as firstName and phoneNumber, plus data used internally by Oracle Commerce Cloud.

A shopper type defines the set of properties that exist for each shopper profile of that type. Shopper types are similar to product types, in that a shopper type is a template for a shopper profile rather than a profile itself. However, there is a currently only one shopper type available. The ID of this shopper type is user.

You cannot create additional shopper types, but you can add custom properties to the user shopper type. For example, if your store carries books, you might want to add a favoriteAuthor property to shopper profiles. You can do this by using the Oracle Commerce Cloud Admin API to modify the user shopper type.

The Shopper Types resource in the Admin API includes endpoints for creating and working with custom properties of the user shopper type. The Profiles resource in the Admin API includes endpoints that you can use to set the values of properties of individual shopper profiles, including custom properties that have been added to the user shopper type.

When you add a custom property to the user shopper type, the property is added to all shopper profiles and preview profiles, including any new profiles you create and any profiles that already exist.