[uf-discuss] new standard for product information

[Guillaume Lebleu]

Ted Drake wrote:
> I would thin this standard could be adopted quickly via microformats. What
> are the thoughts?
>   

I think microformats would probably help adoption with the less 
sophisticated (smaller) retailers quickly, but would not satisfy all the 
business needs of more sophisticated manufacturers.

More:

Microformats can help for product content that is on the manufacturer's 
Web pages. But not all of the product content is on their Web pages, 
especially for sophisticated manufacturers. One example is pricing 
rules, which can be very complex. See the ARTS data model 
http://www.nrf-arts.org/xml_dictionary_5/XMLDictionary-NonMembers.html.

Moreover, having worked on manufactuer/e-retailer collaboration software 
in the 90s, my experience is that some, if not most manufacturers are 
worried about how they differentiate on the electronic shelf (i.e. the 
comparison shopping site), how their brand is represented, and as a 
result are actually reluctant to making their Web site content easily 
scraped, taking the risk that their content end up in places they don't 
want to end up. So, they typically resort to integration mechanism or 
other concepts (retailer-manager store-in-store) they can control and 
authorize for select e-retailers they work closely with.

Guillaume