1. Definition of Simple Product in Magento
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Simple product, as its name, is the most basic product type in Magento. It is a physical item with a defined attribute. Customers cannot change these attributes. Simple products are also used as parts of complex products – configurable, grouped or bundled.
Let’s take this Basic Black Tee for example. It is sold in a fixed size, color, and material. The customer can only buy it without any changes.
Moreover, admins are also allowed to set up specific options for a simple product by adding custom options. You may consider using this instead of configurable product if there is no worry about managing the inventory.
Remember the basic black tee? Now you want to offer a better deal to the customer. You can let them select a text to be printed on the front of the tee. Then, all you need to do is adding a custom option of the text field for the simple product.
2. Display of Simple Product in Magento
At product list page, the simple product is displayed without the attribute like the configurable product. A small note is that if you add custom options for the simple product, the price for the custom options will not be added and displayed at the front end.
3. Pricing of Simple Product in Magento
Besides the basic, Magento also let store owner set up advanced pricing for the simple product.
Special price offers a discounted price during a period (setting at backend). In the storefront when a special price is available, the retail price is crossed out, and the special price appears below in large, bold text.
Tier price offers a quantity discount to members of a specific customer group and website.
Below is an example of how the price will be displayed when setting up both special and tier price for the basic black tee.
4. Inventory of Simple Product in Magento
Each simple product has it own unique SKU (Store Keeping Unit) at the backend. You can choose the stock to be managed or not. If admin sets up as “No,” it means the stock for the product is limitless. Otherwise, the simple product will be notified as out of stock when all items as in quantity number are sold.
Also, Magento allows you to set up the minimum and maximum quantity for products in shopping cart. For example, if the minimum number is 2, which means buyers can only add to cart the product in case quantity is more than 2.
5. Shipping of Simple Product in Magento
The simple product is a physical product, which means it has weight. And weight attribute will affect the shipping fee. You can read more at How to set up shipping method in Magento 2 to know into details how weight can affect the shipping fee.
6. Conclusion
Simple product, as its name, is the most basic Magento product type that every store owners need to grasp. Following our product type blog series, we will publish more article about the remaining more complex product types. So stay tuned and let us know your opinion in the comment section!
