Article

An article is a material (e.g. product) or immaterial (e.g. service) good. Material goods are physical objects or products (e.g. t-shirts, power sockets, etc.). Non-material goods are paid activities or services such as repair, installation, delivery, or rental.

With the help of a PIM system, material and non-material articles can be managed. This way goods can be linked to a suitable service (e.g. camera lens can be rented, Wi-Fi router can be set up, …): Camera lens can be borrowed, Wi-Fi router can be set up, …). In practice, the number of material items clearly outweighs the number of non-material items. Depending on the conception of the data model, several articles can be grouped by an overlying bracket such as the “variant” or / and “product”. In this way, with the help of inheritance, data maintenance can be significantly simplified and accelerated.