WebSphere Commerce allows you to customize what a customer can do in a store. This is referred to as customer entitlement. You entitle customers to various aspects of a store such as what products they can purchase from a store, the price they pay for a product, and what payment methods a store will accept from customers.
Customer entitlement is controlled by the following WebSphere Commerce components:
- Business accounts
- Business accounts help define and track the relationship between customer
organizations and your store. Using business accounts, you can track contracts
and orders for customer organizations and configure how buyers from customer
organizations shop in a store.
Important: The default contract is not associated with a business account. All other contracts must be associated with a business account.
- Contracts
- Contracts affect many parts of a customer's shopping experience such as what products a customer is able to purchase, the price they will pay for the products, how they are allowed to pay for an order and what addresses an order can be shipping to.
- Business policies
- Business policies are sets of rules followed by a store or group of stores that define business processes, industry practices, and the scope and characteristics of a store's or group of stores' offerings. They are the central source and reference template for all allowed and supported practices within a store or group of stores.
The default customer entitlement is defined by a store's default contract. This default contract usually specifies that customers can access the master catalog and purchase products at standard prices. Other aspects of store behavior are also covered by the default contract, such as what payment methods the store accepts, and what shipping providers are used to send orders.