Product rules per customer group

How it works

Customers in each group see the product with their group's rules, for example a pack size of 50 instead of 1 in the quantity selector.

Behind this is a metafield: an extra field on a product or variant in your eCommerce platform's admin. SparkLayer reads the sparklayer.settings metafield on each product variant. Its value is a list with one entry per customer group. Each entry names the group and the settings that apply to it:

[
    {
        "customer_group": "gold-tier",
        "min_order_quantity": 5,
        "max_order_quantity": 50
    }
]

The base entry is the default for every customer group. An entry for a specific group, such as influencer, overrides it for that group. You only need to include the settings you want to set. See Which rule wins.

To set a rule for all customers without customer groups, you can use the individual metafields instead, such as sparklayer.pack_size in Quantity rules or sparklayer.reserve_stock_quantity in Stock display. Don't combine the two on one variant: when a variant has a sparklayer.settings value, it takes priority over the individual metafields.

Which rule wins

When SparkLayer works out a customer's rules for a variant, it checks in this order:

1. The customer's group entry in sparklayer.settings, if there is one. Its settings override the base entry.
2. The base entry in sparklayer.settings. It's the default for every customer group, including groups that have no entry of their own.
3. The individual metafields, such as sparklayer.pack_size or sparklayer.max_order_quantity, but only when the variant has no sparklayer.settings value at all.

So if you use sparklayer.settings to hide a product from one group, and you also want a pack size or a maximum quantity, put those keys in the JSON too, inside each group's entry. Don't rely on the individual metafields for them.

For example, this value on a variant:

[
  { "customer_group": "base", "pack_size": 50 },
  { "customer_group": "retail-partners", "pack_size": 10, "display": true },
  { "customer_group": "distributors", "display": false }
]

If the same variant also had sparklayer.pack_size set to 6, nobody would see packs of 6: the sparklayer.settings value wins.

Quantity pricing can set a minimum too. The lowest quantity tier in the customer's price list is the smallest quantity they can order. If the first tier is 50+, customers can't order fewer than 50 and may see "Unavailable in selected quantity". Add a tier from 1 to fix it. See Quantity pricing.

What hides what

display: false in sparklayer.settings hides a product inside SparkLayer's own views. Hiding it from your Shopify theme's pages needs the free B2B Catalogs app as well.

Variant rules don't hide anything from retail shoppers. sparklayer.settings rules only apply to signed-in B2B customers, by customer group. Retail shoppers and signed-out visitors see every variant your theme shows, and Shopify can't hide a single variant of a product from them. To keep one variant for B2B customers only, such as a 12-pack case, make it a separate product. On Shopify, tag that product b2b-only with B2B Catalogs.

Set product settings for a customer group

Examples

Exclusive products for one group

Company X has 2 customer groups:

1. Base: standard B2B customers
2. Gold tier: preferred customers with discounted pricing and access to exclusive products

To make a range exclusive to Gold tier, they add this to the exclusive variants:

[
    {
        "customer_group": "base",
        "display": false,
        "sell": false
    },
    {
        "customer_group": "gold-tier",
        "display": true,
        "sell": true
    }
]

The base entry hides the variants from every group, and the gold-tier entry overrides it, so these variants are now only visible to Gold tier customers. Variants with no sparklayer.settings value stay visible to everyone, so the rest of the catalogue needs nothing.

Different pack sizes for each group

Company X has 2 customer groups:

1. Wholesale: other businesses that stock their products, who order large quantities
2. Influencer: people who promote their products on social media, who only need single units

To sell in packs of 50 to wholesale customers and singly to influencers, they use:

[
    {
        "customer_group":"base",
        "pack_size":50
    },
    {
        "customer_group":"influencer",
        "pack_size":1
    }
]

The base entry applies to all customer groups. The second entry gives the influencer group a pack size of 1.

Available product settings

You can set any of these for a customer group:

Metafield reference

Use these values if you create the metafield definition yourself:

Troubleshooting

FAQs