Personalizing Offers and Contents

Personalization refers to offering different pricing, promotions or content based on the shopper’s attributes, known as traits. For example, an item’s price may only be discounted for shoppers who are over sixty five years old. Personalized pricing is also referred to as Dynamic Pricing or Differential Pricing.

How Personalization Work

Cortex supports personalization of prices and promotions. A shopper’s traits are added to a Cortex request in two ways:

Cortex automatically infers traits from data in the Commerce Engine or other integrated systems as the request processes
The client application sets traits through the x-ep-user-traits HTTP request header

Automatically Inferred Traits

When a client application requests a price from Cortex, Cortex evaluates a set of pricing rules using traits inferred from data about the shopper and calculates a corresponding price. The list of traits automatically inferred from the Commerce Engine is shown in the Supported Traits section.

The following diagram summarizes how pricing is affected by shopper’s traits inferred from Commerce Engine data:

Pricing affected by shopper's traits inferred from Commerce Engine data

The client application can also pass additional shopper traits to influence personalization of pricing, promotions and content. See Setting Traits for more information.

Setting Traits

Client applications can pass additional shopper traits to Cortex through the x-ep-user-traits HTTP header. Traits passed through this header override the traits inferred internally by Cortex.

The following diagram summarizes how pricing is affected when a client application passes in a shopper trait:

Pricing affected when a client application passes shopper traits

Using the x-ep-user-traits header is optional. However, if you choose to use the x-ep-user-traits header, you must set it on every request to keep pricing and promotions consistent. Cortex returns the default pricing for any request where the x-ep-user-traits header isn’t set, even if the header was previously set in another request.

The x-ep-user-traits HTTP header supports passing multiple traits. Values are a comma-separated list of key/value pairs as outlined in RFC-2616. For example:

x-ep-user-traits: LOCALE=fr-FR, CURRENCY=EUR, GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE=es ...

Cortex also accepts multi-line HTTP headers:

x-ep-user-traits: LOCALE=fr
x-ep-user-traits: CURRENCY=EUR
x-ep-user-traits: ...

According to this RFC, x-ep-user-traits values should be wrapped in quotes (") characters if their value contains a comma. This is common for URL values in traits. The header value should look like this:

x-ep-user-traits: "TARGET_URL=http://example.com", GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE=es

Supported Traits

Out of the box, Cortex supports the traits as described below. Cortex deployments can be customized to change the set of supported traits by disabling defaults and by adding new custom traits.

`LOCALE`

Type: String

Set Internally: Yes

The shopper’s preferred Locale, declared as an IETF RFC 5646 Language Tag. If the store does not support this Locale, then the store default is used. Cortex does not set this trait by default.

`CURRENCY`

Type: String

Set Internally: Yes

The shopper’s preferred Currency, declared as an ISO 4217 Currency Code. If the store does not support this Currency, then the store default is used. Cortex does not set this trait by default.

`SEARCH_TERMS`

Type: String

Set Internally: No

A list of terms the shopper used in a search engine to find the e-commerce site. This term must be separated by a ";" semi-colon. Cortex does not set this trait by default.

`CUSTOMER_AGE_YEARS`

Type: Integer

Set Internally: Yes

The shopper’s age in years. Cortex sets this trait by inspecting the shopper’s profile and calculating the shopper’s age from the shopper’s date of birth.

`CUSTOMER_GENDER`

Type: String

Set Internally: Yes

The shopper’s gender. Cortex sets this by inspecting the shopper’s profile. Valid values are: F, M.

`CUSTOMER_SEGMENT`

Type: String

Set Internally: Yes

A list of segments that a shopper belongs to. Multiple segments must be separated by a ";" semi-colon. Cortex sets this trait by inspecting the shopper’s assigned segments.

`REGISTERED_CUSTOMER`

Type: Boolean

Set Internally: Yes

A flag indicating whether the shopper has registered an account. Cortex sets this trait by inspecting the shopper’s profile.

`INSTORE_SEARCH_TERMS`

Type: String

Set Internally: No

A list of terms the shopper used during in-store searches. Terms must be separated by a ";" semi-colon. Cortex does not set this trait by default.

`TARGET_URL`

Type: String

Set Internally: No

The e-commerce site’s landing page URL. Be sure to wrap the key/value pair in quotes.Cortex does not set this trait by default.

`REFERRING_URL`

Type: String

Set Internally: No

The referring site’s URL. Be sure to wrap the key/value pair in quotes.Cortex does not set this trait by default.

`FIRST_TIME_BUYER`

Type: Boolean

Set Internally: Yes

A flag indicating whether the customer previously made a purchase at this store. Cortex sets this trait by inspecting the shopper’s profile.

`CATEGORIES_VISITED`

Type: String

Set Internally: No

A list of categories the shopper has browsed. Terms must be separated by a ";" semi-colon. Cortex does not set this trait by default.

`GEOIP_CONTINENT`

Type: String

Set Internally: No

The GeoIP continent.

`GEOIP_GMT_TIME_ZONE`

Type: String

Set Internally: No

The GeoIP time zone.

`GEOIP_FIRST_LEVEL_DOMAIN`

Type: String

Set Internally: No

The GeoIP first level domain.

`GEOIP_SECOND_LEVEL_DOMAIN`

Type: String

Set Internally: No

The GeoIP second level domain.

`GEOIP_ZIP_OR_POST_CODE`

Type: String

Set Internally: No

The GeoIP zip or postal code.

`GEOIP_ROUTING_TYPE`

Type: String

Set Internally: No

The GeoIP routing type.

`GEOIP_STATE_OR_PROVINCE`

Type: String

Set Internally: No

The GeoIP state or province.

`GEOIP_CITY`

Type: String

Set Internally: No

The GeoIP city.

`GEOIP_CONNECTION_TYPE`

Type: String

Set Internally: No

The GeoIP connection type.

`GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE`

Type: String

Set Internally: No

The GeoIP country code.

`SHOPPING_CONTEXT_DATE_OVERRIDE`

7.5.1

This trait is available as of version 7.5.1.

Type: Date

Set Internationally: No

The ability to override shopping context evaluation dates. This allows testing of future or past active promotions and price lists.

note

This trait only works if the COMMERCE/SYSTEM/API/enableTrustedTraits setting is set to true. Do not enable this setting if the Cortex headers can be set by end users, as it increases security risks.