Getting linked product category

[Ollie2]

Hi All,

First off I'd like to say hi and how good Zen Cart looks and how well it works for a shopping cart.

Still trying to get to grips with Zen but I've stumbled on a problem that I have a feeling there is no easy solution for after having a quick search of the archives.

I've set up a shop with a single category with a number of products in it that are listed by model number and set the basic details such as description and price.

I've then created a number of categories so a user can find the products by
application. eg. Make -> Model -> Version

Now the same product can appear in multiple categories so I've used the linked products option to place them.

The problem I have is when the user clicks via the make, model and version and then onto product they are taken (quite rightly) to the original product record in the master category. When the user then orders the product although we have the part number we have no way of knowing what they wanted it for (although we know the part they want as we have the part no).

This information would be very useful as the user would like on screen confirmation they're buying the correct item and also we'd like the details too so we know what markets to target.

Is there anyway of getting details of how the user got to that product such as the breadcrumb trail of the previous category?

Is the only other option creating a single product for each application? Obviously this will make updating a much bigger problem.

Cheers