A semantic classification model for e-catalogs

Electronic catalogs (or e-catalogs) hold information about the goods and services offered or requested by the participants, and consequently, form the basis of an e-commerce transaction. Catalog management is complicated by a number of factors and product classification is at the core of these issues. Classification hierarchy is used for spend analysis, customs regulation, and product identification. Classification is the foundation on which product databases are designed, and plays a central role in almost all aspects of management and use of product information. However, product classification has received little formal treatment in terms of underlying model, operations, and semantics. We believe that the lack of a logical model for classification introduces a number of problems not only for the classification itself but also for the product database in general. In this paper, we try to understand what it means to classify products and present how best to represent classification schemes so as to capture the semantics behind the classifications and facilitate mappings between them. We believe the model proposed in this paper satisfies the requirements and challenges that have been raised by previous works.