Pricing and commerce
Availability
Also called: In stock
Whether a product can be bought now, and sometimes where and how quickly.
In practice
Availability drives more lost sales than price. Track it per store and per seller.
Availability has context
A listing may be purchasable for delivery but unavailable for collection, or in stock for one location and unavailable for another. Store the fulfilment method, region, seller and observation time together with the status. Distinguish an explicit out-of-stock message from an unknown state caused by a failed request or a missing page element.
Example: one product, two locations
An illustrative retailer page may offer next-day delivery to one postcode and show no delivery to another. A single in-stock flag loses this distinction. Keep separate observations for each configured location, and do not infer the quantity held in inventory from the presence of a buy button. Preorders and backorders also need their own interpretation.
Using availability in analysis
For pricing comparisons, decide whether unavailable offers belong in the competitor basket and disclose that rule. For stock monitoring, compare repeated observations at a suitable cadence rather than assuming one failed observation is a stockout. Availability data describes what the source displayed at collection time; it is not a promise that a shopper will still be able to purchase later.
Aperture tracks prices, promotions and availability with AI product matching and dated evidence, and Import.io feeds deliver the same data to your own systems.
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