Order and content units

‘Roll’ and ‘bottle’ often just describe the packaging or dispensing form of a product – not its actual quantity. For example, with cable on a roll or liquid in a bottle, it’s not clear how many metres of cable a roll contains or what volume is in a bottle. Even with offers such as ‘6 bottles’ or ‘4 rolls’, the delivered quantity isn’t clear.

If these terms are used as a content unit (CONTENT_UNIT), offers with different quantities can appear equivalent when they’re not. This makes it harder to compare prices and value within a duplicate set and can affect basket optimisation.

The content unit must therefore clearly express the relevant product quantity – for example metres, litres, kilograms or pieces. The order unit (ORDER_UNIT) then indicates the packaging form, i.e. bottle or roll.

If the bottle or roll is itself the product being sold – without needing to compare a contained quantity – ‘piece’ is used as the order unit.

Example: A package with 6 bottles of wine at 1 litre each.

• Order unit = BO

• Content unit = LTR

• No_CU_per_OU = 1

• MinQuantity = 6

• StepQuantity = 6

The standard makes sure that product offers on the platform only use defined order units and content units in combinations that make technical sense. This keeps offers within a duplicate set consistent, transparent and comparable.

Customers can see at a glance exactly what quantity they’ll receive – for example, how many pieces or kilograms are included in one order unit. Clearly matching both units prevents misunderstandings and makes it clear what’s actually being offered and delivered.

Consistently recorded offers can be compared correctly and included in basket optimisation – no offer gets excluded because of inconsistent units. At the same time, the standard reduces input errors and improves data quality, which makes checking and processing offer data easier.

Thousands separators aren’t allowed to ensure numbers are displayed consistently and can be processed unambiguously by systems.

Depending on the country and system, full stops, commas or spaces are interpreted differently. For example, ‘1.000’ could be read as one thousand or as a decimal number. Without a thousands separator, the numeric value is unambiguous and can be reliably processed, compared, sorted and imported across systems.

This requirement also reduces input errors, prevents misunderstandings in how prices and quantities are shown, and so improves data quality.

The order unit ‘pair’ already clearly describes the quantity delivered: the customer receives two matching individual items. An additional content unit is therefore not needed.

If a content unit were added, it could suggest that another quantity matters besides the number of individual items. But with a pair – such as shoes, gloves or similar products – the complete order unit is what counts.

A ‘pair’ is therefore already the complete quantity statement: offers stay clearly comparable and can be correctly factored into basket optimisation.

A ‘set’ is an order unit made up of several matching individual items, offered together as one unit. The components can be the same or different – for example several products, or one product with matching accessories – and together they serve a particular purpose.

‘Set’ describes how the products are put together, not a specific count or quantity. A content unit therefore can’t be used. Instead, the components and, where relevant, the number of individual items must be listed in the long description, for example in a ‘scope of delivery’ section.

Items whose order units, content units or combinations don’t meet the defined standard are currently flagged with a warning in catalogue management. These items can still be processed for now, but should be corrected as soon as possible.

From a set date, these deviations will be treated as errors. The affected items can then no longer be processed, won’t be shown on the platform, and will no longer be visible or orderable for customers. To avoid any interruption in visibility, the units for the affected items need to be checked and brought in line with the standard in good time.