Productcatalogi

Productcatalogi refers to a structured collection of product data used to present items for sale, procurement, or catalog browsing. It covers digital and physical catalogs and may be maintained by manufacturers, distributors, retailers, or marketplaces. The term is common in contexts where multiple catalogs or multilingual, multi-channel presentations must be synchronized.

A typical catalog entry includes identifiers such as GTIN/UPC and an internal SKU; brand; product name and description; taxonomy and classification; attributes (color, size, material, warranty); variants; pricing and currency; availability; media such as images or videos; product URLs; supplier information; and audit data such as creation date and data quality scores.

Catalog data is managed through product information management systems (PIM) and integrated with ERP and ecommerce platforms. Core processes include ingestion, cleansing, enrichment, normalization, localization, versioning, and publishing. Catalogs are often structured around taxonomies and ontologies and support multilingual fields and currency conversions for cross-border selling.

Standards and formats commonly used with product catalogs include GS1 for product identification and data sharing, schema.org/Product for web data, and JSON-LD or XML. BMEcat is used for European B2B exchanges; CSV or Excel files are common for bulk updates. Catalogs may be distributed via APIs, data feeds, or downloadable exports.

Applications span retailers, marketplaces, manufacturers, and procurement platforms, powering search, navigation, merchandising, and purchasing. Challenges include ensuring data quality, deduplication, keeping pricing and stock synchronized, and maintaining consistent taxonomy across channels. Trends include headless commerce, AI-assisted enrichment, and dynamic catalogs responsive to user context.