Private stores

Learn how to use a private store (also known as a purchase plan).

A private store represents a unique and personalized shopping environment designed to cater exclusively to a specific group of customers. Offering special discounts, a tailored product assortment, and unique merchandising opportunities creates an exclusive and bespoke shopping experience. Access to these stores is restricted, ensuring only authorized shoppers benefit from the advantages. This concept, also known as a Purchase Plan, leverages the power of exclusivity to build loyalty and deliver value to the business and its selected clientele.

The private store feature allows you to:

• Tap into new market segments

• Avoid channel conflicts with the minimum advertised price (MAP)

• Liquidate overstocked items or items nearing the end of life

• Strengthen partner relationships by offering discounts to their employees

• Use purchase limits to prevent abuse of a discounted product price

• Fast setup of new offering without Digital River involvement

You can use Global Commerce to create a private store for a specific audience, such as B2B stores, VIP stores, employee stores, etc. A private store allows you to provide special pricing on specific products for a select group of shoppers. You can define which products you want to show in the private store and the price of those products. You can also control how shoppers access the private store.

The site owner, who has a Private Store Manager role in the Global Commerce user interface (UI), configures private stores at the site level. Private stores allow sites to sell to a target market. Sites can deploy, rotate, and retire private stores to suit current product marketing trends.

Note: In the Global Commerce UI, private stores used to be called purchase plans, and the APIs reflect the former nomenclature in version 1 (v1).

Anatomy of a private store

Understanding the anatomy of a private store is crucial for effectively using Digital River's Global Commerce platform to target specific audiences with exclusive offers. A private store is a customizable space within your eCommerce site. It caters to customers, such as B2B clients, VIPs, or employees, by offering them special pricing and products. The image shows the key components of a private store, including its structure, the role of offers and product groups, and how you can use themes and styles to create a unique shopping experience tailored to your targeted demographic. By grasping these elements, site owners and managers can streamline the setup process, apply strategic marketing approaches, and drive sales within their private stores.

This section outlines the organization and structure of a private store as illustrated. The hierarchy shown demonstrates how the components of a private store are organized within a Site, highlighting how different elements like Product Groups, Plans, and Microstores come together to create a comprehensive and customized shopping experience.

• Site

  • Private Store A (Gold Partners)

    • Plan Settings

    • Plan Wide Discounts

    • Product Group 1 (TVs)

      • Purchase Restrictions

      • Group Discounts

      • TV 1

        • Product Specific Discount

      • TV 2

    • Product Group 2 (Accessories)

    • Microstore 1 (Acme, Inc. Employees)

      • Microstore Settings

      • Microstore Authorization Rules

    • Microstore 2 (Widgets, Inc. Employees)

  • Private Store B (Employees)

  This structure enables a site to have multiple private stores, each tailored to specific groups like Gold Partners or general employees. Further customization and targeting are available through product groups and microstores.

Anatomy of a private store