Ensembles

Overview

Ensembles are a way to group products that are sold both as individual items, and as parts of a collection. For example, items in a gift basket. Let's say that you sell a gift basket that includes a number of bath items: one or two soaps, a shampoo and conditioner, and a lotion. The items in this basket are also sold separately and are available as separate items in your catalog.

This raises the question: how will these items be listed in your catalog feed? The items in the basket each have their own product IDs, and the basket itself has its own product ID, separate from the items inside it. But a person purchasing this basket has demonstrated at least a partial affinity for each item in it, and we need to take that affinity into consideration when deciding on recommendations.

The way that we note this is by indicating that each of these items is also a child of the gift basket in which they are also sold together, and we do this by using the product parent ID in the Product Feed File.

Using parent product IDs, you can collect the affinity information when a customer purchases an ensemble and apply that affinity to all of the items inside the ensemble.

Ensure you work with your Algonomy team is you plan to use ensembles to ensure that you set up your site. Ensembles work by assigning the ensemble a Product Parent ID and using that ID to identify the ensemble that an individual product belongs to.

Ensembles in the Product Feed

Let's look deeper at the example given above. Our ensemble is a basket with five individual products: a shampoo, a body lotion, a loofah, a scented candle, and a body wash. Each one of those products will have their own product ID. Assign a new ID to the ensemble, and then assign that as the Product Parent ID when passing the catalog feed.

For example, let's say that you have assigned the gift basket an ID of "00010." The shampoo in it has an ID of "001." The line that describes the shampoo in the Product Feed File would look like this:

product_id|name|price|recommendable|image_url|link_url|product_parent_id
001|Scented Shampoo|12.99|true|assets/images/shampoo-001.jpg|products/shampoo-001.html|00010

Now the gift basket and the shampoo are linked. With this link in place, all purchases of the gift basket will have a link to each item in it, and can share affinity data with them. However, not all purchases of the shampoo will share affinity with the basket, as separate purchases should only reflect on the shampoo itself.