The standard assumption is that all stores participating in a promotion will carry the same assortment of merchandise. In this case, you simply assign single articles to a promotion.

However, if you do need to have different merchandise in different stores, you can define assortment modules to which individual articles are then assigned. It is also possible to create modules containing a subset of the variants of a generic article. In addition to standard assortment modules, modules can be created specifically for promotions, such as back-to-school promotions or January white sales.

In the case of stores carrying the same merchandise, the system automatically creates a promotion module without any action being required on your part.

If an article is not normally carried in a store, but the store is to participate in a promotion which includes that article, then the system will automatically create a listing for that article and that store for the duration of the promotion. This enables the store to sell articles that it does not normally handle.

If certain stores are to carry some of the promotional articles but not others, you can manage this by creating exclusion modules. If an article of merchandise is assigned to an exclusion module, the article will not be available in the stores to which the exclusion module is assigned.

You cannot override an exclusion module at the promotion level. That is, if an article is expressly excluded (by an exclusion module) from a store, you cannot assign the article to that store even for the duration of the promotion.

Each promotion must have at least one store group assigned to it. A store group contains one or more stores with some common factor: Southern stores vs. Northern stores, food stores vs. automotive stores, upscale stores vs. discount stores. These store groups are defined in the Classification system and assigned during promotion planning. For a given promotion, a store can only be assigned to a single store group.

In Customizing for Retail, under Applications, you define which class types can be used in promotions. Only store groups with these class types are permitted in promotions. It is important that store groups which are defined as customer class types, for example, are entered here or else they cannot participate in promotions.

You can also assign a store group to a distribution channel. In this case, only those stores belonging to this distribution channel will take part in the promotion.