Gartner defines the product information management (PIM) market as the packaged solutions that enable product, commerce and marketing teams to create and maintain an approved shareable version of rich product content. PIM makes a single, trusted source of product information available for multichannel commerce and data exchange. PIM solutions now support complex use cases, including product data syndication (PDS), product experience management (PXM), product information effectiveness analytics, digital shelf analytics and product data contextualization. They lay the foundation for delivering personalization, product discovery and digital experience platforms (DXPs). PIM is available as hosted cloud-native, SaaS, private cloud and on-premises solutions.
Gartner defines Search and Product Discovery as applications that augment digital commerce solutions to facilitate navigation, filtering, comparisons, and ultimately selection of products. They provide search (keyword, natural language and visual), merchandising (automation, configuration, and curation of business rules to make a product discoverable based on business needs), product recommendations, catalog navigation (and SEO keyword automation), personalization and analytics capabilities through SaaS to enable customers (B2C and B2B) to transact. They also enable providers (merchandisers, content managers, and search specialists) to support customer experiences. With the emergence of generative AI, conversational search interfaces are now appearing. Search and Product Discovery applications use product data to facilitate navigation, filtering, comparisons and ultimately product selection. Search results can be highly visual, using engaging layouts and multimedia. Content other than product information, such as educational information, compliance materials and related news may also be included in search results to engage customers and further support buying decisions.