Item Grouping Methods
There are multiple ways of grouping items in Commerce web stores — some grouping methods have specific purposes while others are more general purpose. The following table describes all available item grouping methods and highlights the differences between them.
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Grouping Methods |
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Item Collections |
Commerce Categories |
Merchandise Hierarchy Nodes |
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Main Purpose |
General purpose |
Web store navigation |
Reporting |
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Description |
Item collections are a general purpose way of grouping items. Used by Personalized Catalog Views. For more information, see Personalized Catalog Views. |
Commerce Categories are used to create a hierarchical structure of product categories, subcategories, and products that are used in the navigation structure of web stores. |
Merchandise Hierarchy Nodes are used to organize your company’s merchandise in a way that enables the production of reports, which identify market trends and analyze shopper buying and demand. |
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Web Store Availability? |
Available for use with:
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Available only for NetSuite web stores. |
Available for use with:
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Cardinality |
Many to many |
Many to many |
One to many A Merchandize Hierarchy node can contain multiple items but one item cannot be included in more than one Merchandise Hierarchy node. |
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Member Definition |
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Static (manual selection) |
Static (manual selection) |
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Date Effectivity |
Does not support date effectivity. |
Supports date effectivity, that is, Start Date and End Date. |
Supports date effectivity, that is, Start Date and End Date. |
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More Information |
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There are other ways of grouping items within NetSuite, including item types such as item groups, kits and assemblies, and grouping methods specific to Site Builder, such as Site Categories. For more information about these, please see Groups, Assemblies, and Kit/Packages and Site Builder Tabs & Categories.