Demotions¶

Demotions is a method to temporarily decrease the strategy score of products in a market. It is useful for use cases such as demotions of a suppliers products, demoting seasonal wear or demoting certain brands or type of products. Demoted products will suppress positions in search results, category pages, and other locations where demotions are supported. All demotions are managed in the Business app.

Before a demotion can be created, the Admin app must be fully configured. Access for users to the Demotions tab is set in the Admin app User management tab on a per user basis.

Demotion basics¶

Each demotion is identified by a name and has start and end date, and is active in one or more markets. The maximum length of a demotion name is 50 characters. During the demotion, the strategy score of each demoted product is adjusted to be lower than all products which are not demoted. Statistics are collected during the demotion and can be measured.

It is not recommend to have too many active demotions or promotions at the same time. Too many demotions or promotions will likely result in unintended outcomes and require a lot of manual labour.

Markets¶

A demotion can be active in one or more markets at the same time. The selected products of the demotion are based on the products present in the current market in the apps.

Statistics¶

During a demotion period, aggregated statistics for all demoted products are collected for displays, clicks, sold units, revenue, and profit. Revenue and profit are shown in the currency configured for the current market.

Statistics can be measured to show the impact of the demotion. When activating measurements, 80% of the sessions will show the demotion and 20% will not. The impact is measured by comparing the statistics from sessions with demotions to sessions without demotions. The aggregated statistics of a demotion are based on all sessions, i.e. both sessions with and without demotions. It is not always recommended to measure demotions.

Selecting products¶

Products used in a demotion can be either hand picked or included (or excluded) by rules.

Hand picked¶

Products can be hand picked for a demotion. The Search box can be used to search for products using the search attributes configured for the products, including a product key. Products can also imported via the menu in the top right hand corner of the dialogue window. Hand picked products can be removed from a demotion directly from the main Edit demotion dialogue window.

Rule based¶

Products can be included to, and excluded from, a demotion using one or more rule sets. A rule set can include several rules where each rule can either include or exclude products where a configured attribute, such as a brand name or a product category, has one or more values found in eSales.

If more than one value is selected for an attribute in a rule, the values are to be considered as using the logical OR operator. I.e. if a rule with the attribute brand has both Adidas and Nike as values, products with brand configured as Adidas or Nike will be selected.

Each additional rule in a rule set is based on the data returned by the previous rule (logical AND operator). The final product selection within the rule set is based on the data returned by the last rule. This is useful when narrowing down a product set. For example, a rule set has two include rules where first rule has the attribute brand and the value Adidas, and the second rule has the attribute colour and the value Black. The final product selection within the rule set are products with the colour set to Black from the data set where the brand is Adidas.

It is not recommended to use different rules using include with the same attribute within a rule set as they most likely return no products. I.e. if a rule set has two include rules where first rule has the attribute brand and the value Adidas, and the second rule also has the attribute brand but the value Nike, it will not return any products at all. This is because no products with Nike as brand are present in the data returned where brand is Adidas.

Several rule sets can be used simultaneously. The rule sets operate independently of each other (logical OR operator).

Individual products included by a rule set can be excluded if they are are deemed unfit for the demotion. The products can either be excluded using a rule to exclude products by their id's or by selecting them individually in the demotion details view. Selected products are dimmed with a text denoting that they are blocked.

Use cases¶

The key use cases for demotions includes managing stock level, demotion of a suppliers products, demotion of a product type (like spare parts) and demotions of seasonal wear.

Best practice¶

• Do no use multiple include rules with the same attribute and different values within a rule set, instead use one include rule with one attribute and multiple values.
• Measure statistics of a demotion if needed
• Always include a rule to demote products out of stock
• Use rules for inclusion before rules for exclusion in a rule set