Hi all,
I've got a client with a somewhat unusual e-commerce need, and I'm trying to figure out whether Zen Cart is a good choice. Allow me to outline the scenario:
The client is running what would be best described as a market shopping/courier service.
1. The customer places an order online for market items (e.g. different food items), with a quantity (variable type, could be '500g' for cheese, could be '2' for squash), and an optional preferred vendor. They can also specify some general preferences ('cheapest available', 'organic', etc.)
2. The service dispatches a courier to the market, who sources the items, and responds to the customer with a total order cost. (Market prices vary.)
3. The customer OKs this, and the courier purchases, delivers, and collects payment.
So what makes this different from a stock-based commerce site, is that there's (mostly*) no preset inventory or prices. Since most e-commerce solutions are based around that, it makes things challenging. I'm wondering if Zen Cart would work by creating a generic 'market item' product, and using text attributes to get the description, etc. What would be key is that:
1. the differing attributes would create different line items in an order. I.e. even though there's technically only one 'product', '500g' 'cheese' would be a separate line item from '2' 'squash'.
2. an admin could edit in prices to the order after it's placed. This would be in step 2 above, they'd need to be able to add in prices once they're obtained.
Any feedback would be much appreciated!
*there will also be 'baskets', which are predefined combos. These would be conventional inventory type items with a set price, so the system does need to have that capability.
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