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B2BCMarket supports different types of marketplace offerings, including physical products, digital products, and services.
An offering represents something that a seller can make available within the B2BCMarket marketplace. The offering can be connected to its business context through the Connected Entity Architecture (BCEA).
This allows marketplace participants to understand an offering not only as an individual listing, but also in relation to the Business, Company, Branch, and marketplace context behind it.
A product offering is a marketplace representation of something that a seller makes available to buyers or other marketplace participants.
Depending on the nature of the offering, it may represent a physical product, a digital product, or a service.
The offering can contain information that helps marketplace participants understand what is being offered and the context in which it is available.
Physical products are tangible goods that can be offered through the marketplace.
Examples can include manufactured goods, packaged products, equipment, materials, and other tangible items.
Digital products are products that can be delivered or accessed digitally.
Examples can include digital content, software, documents, media, and other digitally delivered offerings.
Services represent activities or professional capabilities offered through the marketplace.
Services may be associated with a business, company, branch, geographic area, or other marketplace context.
Physical products are tangible marketplace offerings.
A physical product may contain detailed product information such as:
These details can help buyers and other marketplace participants understand the physical offering.
Digital products are offerings that can be provided or accessed through digital means.
Depending on the product, information may include:
Digital offerings can participate in the same connected marketplace structure as other offerings.
Services represent capabilities or activities offered through the marketplace.
A service offering can be associated with a Business, Company, or Branch and can include geographic or service-area information where appropriate.
Service information may include:
Products in B2BCMarket can have their own public identity.
The public product identity is used to provide a stable way to identify and access the product through the marketplace catalog.
Product identity remains connected to the broader business context through its relationships with the Branch, Company, and Business.
A B2BCMarket product is not intended to exist as an isolated marketplace record.
This relationship allows marketplace participants to understand the organization and operational context associated with a product.
Products can contain classification information that helps organize marketplace offerings.
The current product catalog structure can represent:
Product information can include country-related information.
Identifies the country associated with where the product is made.
Identifies the country associated with where the product is assembled.
Country information can also include standardized country identifiers where available.
Physical product offerings can contain packaging information.
Packaging can represent a size together with its associated unit.
Packaging information can provide buyers and marketplace participants with additional product context.
Product inventory information can indicate the quantity currently associated with a product.
In the current catalog architecture, inventory quantity is calculated from product stock records.
This provides marketplace participants with inventory-related information when it is available.
Product offerings can contain images that help marketplace participants understand the offering visually.
Product image information can include:
Images form part of the product representation within the catalog.
Products and services can participate in different marketplace relationship models.
Business to Business.
Products or services can be offered to other businesses.
Business to Consumer.
Products or services can be offered directly to consumers.
Business to Business to Consumer.
Products or services can participate in marketplace relationships involving businesses and consumers.
Product and service offerings can participate in different geographic marketplace strategies.
Offerings can be associated with local branches, geographic areas, or defined service areas.
Offerings can also participate in broader or international marketplace strategies.
A product can be associated with a Branch through the marketplace product-to-branch relationship.
This relationship allows a product to be represented in the context of a specific operational or geographic branch.
Because a Branch belongs to a Company, the product can also be understood within its Company context.
The product can also be connected to the broader Business context.
This allows a marketplace visitor to move from an individual offering toward the organization behind it.
The connected structure also supports navigation in the opposite direction.
A visitor can therefore begin with a product and discover its surrounding business context.
Products have an independently accessible catalog representation within the B2BCMarket architecture.
The product catalog can contain detailed product information while also providing navigation to related Business, Company, and Branch entities.
B2BCMarket's public catalog architecture can also be represented through machine-readable catalog systems.
Product-related information can therefore be represented in structured catalog formats while maintaining the same underlying relationships used by the public catalog pages.
The important principle is that machine-readable representations reflect the same entity relationships rather than creating a separate relationship model.
Product catalog representations can include marketplace status information.
These status values provide additional context about the product's current marketplace state.
A B2BCMarket product is more than an isolated listing.
The product remains connected to the business structure in which it participates.
Buyers can discover product offerings through the connected catalog structure.
Instead of encountering an offering without context, buyers can navigate between the product and the related Branch, Company, and Business.
Sellers can use product offerings to present the products or services they make available within the marketplace.
The connected structure allows those offerings to remain associated with the seller's Business, Company, and Branch context.
Merchants can explore marketplace offerings together with the business context surrounding those offerings.
The connected catalog structure can therefore provide merchants with additional context when evaluating marketplace activity and opportunities.
B2BCMarket connects offerings with the business context behind them.
A product or service can have its own marketplace identity while remaining connected to the Business, Company, and Branch associated with its marketplace participation.
Physical products, digital products, and services can participate in a connected marketplace structure.
Each offering can be represented within its marketplace context while remaining connected to the Business, Company, and Branch entities around it.
This connected approach helps buyers, sellers, merchants, and other marketplace participants understand both the offering and the business context behind it.