Product Association Rules
Product association rules describe the relationship between two or more products and are used for cross-selling purposes in applications such as SAP CRM Web Channel and Telesales. Association rules may either be created manually or may be determined from the SAP BI (Business Information Warehouse) using data mining techniques. For more information about generating rules in the BI system, see SAP Library under 
SAP NetWeaver
SAP NetWeaver Library
SAP NetWeaver by Key Capability
Information Integration by Key Capability
Business Intelligence
Data Mining
Association Analysis
.
Product association rules are used to determine what product or products may be recommended in addition to (cross-selling) or instead of (up-selling/down-selling) a given product, and under what conditions. These conditions can include the relationship between the products in terms of price or contribution margin for example. You can create association rules that only apply for particular target groups or marketing profiles, or you can create “global” rules where no such restriction applies.
Structure
There are two basic types of association rule:
Cross-Selling
The cross-selling association rules are specified in terms of leading
products and dependent
products.
Up-Selling/Down-Selling
These association rules are specified in terms of the relationships between
products. The ranking value for the products determines whether they are proposed as up-selling or as down-selling products.
Example
This example shows a range of similar products for which an up-/down-selling rule can be defined. Up-selling/down-selling relationships are determined according to the value in the Rank
column. This number reflects the value of the product.
The higher the ranking value, the greater the value of the product.
If someone orders the product CP1, then CP2 and CP3 can be proposed as up-selling products.
Product ID | Description | Rank |
CP3 | Cell phone case (leather) | 3 |
CP2 | Cell phone case (material) | 2 |
CP1 | Cell phone case (plastic) | 1 |