Definition
Product taxonomy is the structured classification of products into categories and subcategories for e-commerce or inventory management.
Purpose
The purpose is to organize products logically for search, recommendations, and analytics. AI automates categorization to handle large-scale inventories.
Importance
- Essential for online retail navigation and search.
- Improves user experience by grouping similar products.
- Requires frequent updates to reflect new products.
- Errors may reduce discoverability or cause compliance issues.
How It Works
- Define taxonomy schema (categories, hierarchies).
- Collect product descriptions and metadata.
- Train ML models to classify products.
- Validate accuracy with human review.
- Continuously update taxonomy for new items.
Examples (Real World)
- Amazon: AI categorizes millions of products into hierarchies.
- Walmart: product taxonomy for search and inventory.
- Google Shopping: automated categorization for merchant listings.
References / Further Reading
- GS1 Global Product Classification Standards.
- Product Categorization with Machine Learning — ACM SIGKDD.
- IEEE Intelligent Systems: AI in Retail.