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Setting up a Product Catalog for Merchandising

Why set up a separate Product Catalog for Merchandising?

Merchandising requires a connected Product Catalog to function — both Boosted Campaigns and Customized Feeds rely on direct access to your catalog to search, filter, and select products.

While the Recommendation Engine also uses a Product Catalog, setting up a dedicated one for Merchandising has two key advantages:

  • Custom column names. The Merchandising destination allows you to define your own column names when creating CustomFields. In contrast, the Recommendation Engine schema uses fixed names like CustomField1, CustomField2, and so on, which can make it difficult to remember what was mapped where when working in the Merchandising interface.
  • Independent data control. A separate Dataflow gives you full control over which data — and in what shape — flows into Merchandising, independently of what goes to the Recommendation Engine or Search.

1: Create a Source and Schema

In the Sources tab of Data Manager, create a new Source with a clear name such as Product Catalog – Merchandising.

Then go to the Schemas tab and click Create new schema. In the Select destination drop-down, choose Merchandising. In the Select type drop-down, select Product Catalog, and give the schema a name.

Unlike the Recommendation Engine schema, the Merchandising Product Catalog schema allows you to add custom columns alongside the default fields (ProductNumber, ProductUrl, ProductName, RetailPrice, etc.). This is where you can define meaningful names for any additional product attributes you want available in Merchandising — for example, ProfitMargin, SupplierName, or SeasonTag — rather than mapping them to a generic CustomField slot.

Click Save schema when done.

2: Create a Dataflow

In the Dataflows tab, click + Create new dataflow. Give it an appropriate name, select the Source you created above, and in Select destination, choose Merchandising.

Proceed through the steps as described in the Introduction to the Data Manager. In the Transform & Map step, add the Merchandising schema you created in step 1, and map your product catalog fields accordingly — including any custom columns you defined.

For Activate, a daily run is sufficient in most cases, as the catalog will be fully overwritten at each run.

Once activated, the catalog will be available in Merchandising within appro. 30 minutes.