Product Data CSV Files

This page describes the file format of the product data CSV files. For information on how to import these files into the Kaufland marketplace, see the Managing Product Data page.

Overview

The only way to get product data into the Kaufland marketplace is with product data CSV files (see the Managing Product Data page for the difference between product data and inventory data). To maximize sales, you should send the Kaufland marketplace as much information about your products as possible. This enables users to better find your products by searching, browsing and filtering on the Kaufland marketplace site. Each piece of data about a product is called an attribute.

File Format

The product data files must be CSV files with semicolon separators and UTF-8 character encoding. The first line of the CSV file should be a header line where each column contains the name of a product attribute. Each of the subsequent lines in the file should describe a single product and each column should contain the attribute value for that product. If an attribute has multiple values, you must create multiple columns with the attribute name, and each column should contain a separate value.

Here is an example of a partial product data file, displayed as table, as it would be in spreadsheet software:

Here is the same data in the CSV format that the Kaufland marketplace expects:

ean;locale;title;colour;picture;picture;picture
4019111448324;de-DE;Siena Garden Gartenbank Kadina II;Weiß;http://example.com/sggk2_1.jpg;http://example.com/sggk2_2.jpg;
4039568600076;de-DE;Inko Stapelbank Duke Bronze;Bronze;http://example.com/isdb_1.jpg;http://example.com/isdb_2.jpg;
4039568600113;de-DE;Inko Stapelbank Nexus Weiss;Weiß;http://example.com/isnw_1.jpg;http://example.com/isnw_2.jpg;http://example.com/isnw_3.jpg
4039568600021;de-DE;Inko Stapelbank Nexus Bronze;Bronze;http://example.com/isnb_1.jpg;http://example.com/isnb_2.jpg;

Things to note:

• This is just a partial example and does not contain most of the attributes you should include.
• The first row contains the attribute names.
• Every product has an EAN. Without the EAN, we cannot identify the product.
• Every row has a locale. The whole CSV file may include product data for more than one locale
• One of the products has 3 pictures, so there are 3 picture columns.

Categories

One of the possible attributes you can specify is "category", but it behaves differently from the other attributes. Make sure you read the section on categories on the Managing Product Data page, to understand how our category system works.

If you give the name of a leaf category, we will place the product in that category. You can also give the name of a category higher up in the tree, but since products can only be placed in leaf categories, the product will not be placed in the specified category. Instead, the system will use the rest of the product data you have given us (description, title, etc.) to automatically find the best leaf category that is a sub-category of the one you specified, and place the product in that leaf category.

Alternatively, you can leave the category blank for some or all of your products. If you don't specify a category for a product, then the system will use the rest of the product data to automatically find the category that best fits your product, and will place the product in that category. If you don't want to specify the category for any products in the file, you can leave the entire column out of your product data CSV file.

Mapping Example

When you specify a category in a Product Data CSV file, it doesn't have to be a leaf category. If you specify a category higher up in the category tree, the Kaufland marketplace will automatically find the descendant leaf category that is best for your product.

¹⁾ This is your own product name.
²⁾ The name of the category the product is placed in in your system.
³⁾ The name of the Kaufland marketplace category which the category from your system is mapped onto.
⁴⁾ The name of the category the Kaufland marketplace algorithm would assign the product to below the Kaufland marketplace category provided in the file.

Why specifying only leaf category mappings can be bad:
Often the Kaufland marketplace leaf categories don't map one-to-one onto a seller's internal categories. For example, the seller may have only one category for shoes, but we have several different categories for shoes, e.g. tennis shoes, boots, etc. In this case, the seller can map his products onto our parent category "shoes", which contains multiple leaf categories. Our system will then find the right leaf category for each product. For this reason it is often better to specify a non-leaf category for your product.

User-Defined Attributes

In addition to sending columns for attributes that the Kaufland marketplace already knows about, you should also send any other attributes for the products you have. For example, for the benches in the above example, you have the expected attributes, but also information about the height and width of some of the benches. Even though they are not listed as attributes for benches, you should add two additional columns to your file for the values, one for each attribute. You can name the columns however you have them named internally, in either German or English. Sending these attributes will help the Kaufland marketplace to improve the quality of your data in the future and increase your sales.

Here is a file for the above data, assuming each product only has one picture, but also height and length:

Here is the same data in the CSV format that the Kaufland marketplace expects:

ean;title;colour;picture;Höhe;Länge
4019111448324;de-DE;Siena Garden Gartenbank Kadina II;Weiß;http://example.com/sggk2_1.jpg;90cm;120cm
4039568600076;de-DE;Inko Stapelbank Duke Bronze;Bronze;http://example.com/isdb_1.jpg;;
4039568600113;de-DE;Inko Stapelbank Nexus Weiss;Weiß;http://example.com/isnw_1.jpg;94cm;110cm
4039568600021;de-DE;Inko Stapelbank Nexus Bronze;Bronze;http://example.com/isnb_1.jpg;94cm;110cm

Example File

You can download an example file with 100 products in it here: Example Product Data CSV file

Product Data Guidelines

For further information please visit our product data guidelines. These guidelines will help you to optimally specify your product data in order to achieve higher sales.