The Marketplace Sku Strategy

For all the marketplaces where this feature is implemented, it's found on marketplace config -> general -> Marketplace Sku Strategy, usually in an Admin only section.

Currently available for: eBay, Google Ads, Catch, Kogan, Shopify Marketplaces, The ICONIC

What it does?

We calculate the value for the Marketplace Product Variant field marketplace sku depending on the choice of strategy.

Where is that field used depends on the marketplace and is explained later below.

A. The OMNIVORE_DEFAULT:

For single sku products, the Marketplace Product Variant field marketplace sku is the Product sku

For multi sku products, the  Marketplace Product Variant field marketplace sku is the product sku dash variant retailer ref

B. The other choices:

the Marketplace Product Variant field marketplace sku is the variant field specified by the choice, currently retailer ref, mpn or external id (this one is not visible in the Omnivore product page)

NOTE

The select box that allows you to chose a marketplace sku strategy only applies for the variant level sku, aka the marketplace sku.

If the marketplace requires 2 identifiers - one for the master product and one for each variant (just like we have it in Omnivore with sku and retailer ref) the master product identifier is not going to be changed by the marketplace sku strategy selection, unless we write custom code specific for that marketplace as we did for ebay see below.

Where is it used?

For all the marketplaces except ebay, the Marketplace Product Variant field marketplace sku is use as the value of the product sku in the marketplace, where a product in the marketplace api is a variant in Omnivore.

Where the products are grouped in a single listing with options, a "group sku" is required and that is always the Omnivore product sku.  

eBay

Ebay is a more complicated use case because it depends on the type of product:

1. For single sku products, ebay needs an "item sku".

2. For a multi-sku product, ebay needs both the "item sku" for the parent product and also a "variation sku" for each individual variants.

Due to the above, to understand how this works we need to consider 2 steps of the process:

Step 1: the marketplace product variant field named marketplace sku is populated depending on the strategy choice (same functionality as the other marketplaces)

Step 2: the marketplace sku value and the product sku are used to determine the ebay product payload like so:

1. For single sku products, the ebay "item sku" takes the value from the one and only marketplace product variant field marketplace sku. There is no "variation sku" required in this case.

2. For multi-sku products, the ebay "item sku" takes the value from product field sku (same as marketplace product sku) and the ebay "variation sku" takes the value from the marketplace product variant field marketplace sku.

Example data in the xml payload:

~