Shopify Markets Catalogs Explained: Products, Prices, and Promotions

By Milan Dhameliya · · 9 min read

Set up regional Shopify catalogs, trace inherited products and prices, and test what customers see before, during, and after a scheduled promotion.

Shopify Markets catalogs control which products a market can buy and the prices it receives. Create them under Markets > Catalogs, assign them to the intended market, and check the combined result of every applicable catalog before publishing.

The important distinction is between the catalog you edited and the assortment the customer actually receives. This guide follows an illustrative homewares store selling cups, towels, and bottles across the US and Canada. It shows how to build the selection, explain an unexpected product or price, and schedule a promotion with a verifiable end state. The example is a planning exercise, not a client case study.

One store, several assortments

A market identifies the audience; a catalog supplies products and pricing for that audience. Shopify also supports separate market customizations for currency, language, domains, and other settings. Keep those decisions distinct when planning your configuration. Shopify's Markets overview describes the different controls.

For the homewares example, write the intended outcome before opening the editor: US customers can buy cups, towels, and bottles; Canadian customers can buy cups and towels. Then add the pricing requirement in words: towels follow the general adjustment, while one cup has an individually approved price. This gives the team something concrete to check without inventing a price list during setup.

I would keep one planning row per exception: product or variant, destination, desired availability, pricing rule, reason, and person responsible. An instruction such as “Canada assortment approved” is too broad to explain why one bottle should disappear. An explicit exclusion is something a second person can verify.

Do not create separate catalogs merely to make the admin look organized. If you need only currency conversion, start with our guide to native Shopify multi-currency and apps. If the change is translated copy, use the translation workflow guide. Add catalog complexity when product selection or pricing actually needs to differ.

Which kind of market are you configuring?

This walkthrough focuses on country and region markets. Shopify's market-type documentation says those markets are available on all plans. Retail catalog customization requires POS Pro or Plus. B2B has separate catalog-assignment limits: Basic, Grow, and Advanced support three active assignments across B2B markets; Plus supports unlimited B2B market catalogs.

These are different constraints. Do not apply the B2B limit to a regional assortment, or assume retail access follows automatically from an international setup. Record the market type alongside the requirement before estimating the work.

The Canada example: why an excluded bottle can remain available

Suppose a North America parent catalog includes cups, towels, and bottles. You add a Canada submarket catalog containing only cups and towels. For parent and child markets of the same type, the catalogs combine: the inherited bottle is still available. Omitting it from the child catalog does not remove the parent's inclusion. Shopify documents this in its submarket inheritance rules.

Price precedence is a separate question. For a product in both catalogs, the more specific submarket's price wins. Where multiple parent catalogs apply without a more specific price, Shopify uses the lowest price. That makes “the bottle is missing from my Canada catalog” insufficient evidence that Canada cannot buy it.

My recommended starting design for this example is a shared parent assortment containing only cups and towels, with bottles added through a US-specific catalog. Before making that change, list every audience using the parent. Removing bottles from a shared catalog affects more than the Canada configuration you happened to be reviewing.

A Canadian test passes only when the bottle is unavailable through every applicable regional catalog, while the US test still permits it. This paired check is more useful than inspecting either catalog in isolation. It catches a fix that removes the unwanted Canadian offer but also removes a product you intended to keep selling elsewhere.

Use Markets > Graph view to trace the relationships. Its product section exposes included catalogs and pricing adjustments; View as highlights the matching market for a selected customer context. Shopify's graph-view instructions also explain how to reach checkout preview. Save the observed parent relationships in your planning record so the next merchandiser can understand the decision.

Build the draft and explain its prices

Follow Shopify's catalog setup instructions:

An individual fixed price overrides the catalog-wide adjustment. Review products through Products > View as > your market; click a price to inspect its calculation. Draft orders bypass market product-publishing restrictions, so they are not a substitute for a storefront availability test.

Use names that explain ownership and purpose, such as “Canada core assortment” and “Canada seasonal promotion.” Avoid names like “New catalog final,” which say nothing about the intended audience. Keep the approved product list next to the pricing decisions so reviewers do not accidentally approve one without the other.

For the sample cup, record whether the approved value is individually set or calculated. For the towel, record the general adjustment it should follow. If the two respond differently when you change a general adjustment, you now have a specific question to investigate rather than a vague report that pricing is inconsistent.

For a custom storefront or pricing integration, ask the developer to retrieve contextual prices from Shopify. Shopify's Markets developer guidance explicitly advises against calculating international prices from base variant prices. Your acceptance test should compare the displayed variant and currency with the intended market result, including after the customer changes location.

Three checks before customers see the assortment

1. The intended shopping journey

In the relevant country context, open a cup directly, find the towel through store search, and try the bottle URL. Shopify documents that excluded products disappear from storefront lists and search; a restricted item can also be removed from the cart when the shipping address changes. Those behaviors are described in the same Markets guidance.

For each check, record the selected country, product variant, entry URL, observed price, and result. Repeat the journey for the US selection. Include at least one product that should remain available everywhere, so your test covers both intended restrictions and ordinary purchases.

2. The destination change

Start with a product available in one destination, then test the journey toward a destination where it should be excluded. Note exactly when the cart changes and what the shopper is told. I would give customer service that sequence before publishing, particularly if existing marketing links point directly to the restricted product.

This is also a useful handoff to a theme developer: provide the exact link, country selection, variant, and observed message. “Canada is broken” does not give them enough information to reproduce the problem. Separate the expected product restriction from any unclear presentation around it.

3. The unchanged market

Choose a market outside the intended change and repeat a small purchase-path check. Use the same control product before and after the edit. If its availability or price changes unexpectedly, revisit shared assignments before adjusting the product itself. Keep this check even when the edited catalog has a reassuring country-specific name.

After the checks pass, open the catalog under Markets > Catalogs, change its publishing status to Active, and save. Recheck the customer journey after publication. For a scheduled offer, leave activation to the rollout configured below.

A promotion needs an ending as well as a starting time

Shopify announced catalog support in Rollouts on October 23, 2026. Catalogs themselves are not new. The addition lets merchants schedule catalog status changes alongside other launch changes.

Choose the intended ending first. A Launch makes changes permanent; an Event runs for a defined period; an Experiment compares treatment and control. These distinctions come from Shopify's rollout-type guide. Rollouts require Basic or higher, and experiments require Grow or higher.

The rollback is not a saved copy of your catalog. Rollouts change whether a catalog is Active or Draft. Price and product edits remain edits to that catalog, and can affect customers whenever it is active. Shopify explains this limitation, permissions, and plan access in its rollout requirements.

I would prepare a separate draft promotional catalog and document which existing catalogs should remain active during the offer. Do not assume that activating a new selection withdraws inherited products. Reuse the cup, towel, and bottle checks for three states: before the promotion, while it runs, and after it ends.

For example, the Canada record could say: cup available at its regular approved price before the event, available at its promotional price during it, and available at the approved regular price afterward. The bottle stays unavailable in all three states. Write the expected catalog statuses beside those outcomes; then verify that your actual assignments produce them.

To configure it, go to Markets > Rollouts > Create rollout. Name it, select the rollout type, then use Add changes > Catalogs to select the existing catalogs and set each to Active or Draft. Apply the changes, review audience eligibility, and set the schedule. Shopify's creation guide specifies that scheduling uses the store timezone under Settings > General.

Before saving, have another person read the stated ending behavior against your planned post-promotion assortment. Assign someone to check the actual end state. If staff need to edit the catalogs during the event, require a fresh review of that ending; the original approval no longer describes everything that changed.

When a smaller experiment creates a bigger mismatch

Shopify's channel-reach documentation distinguishes experiments and partial-audience events from full-audience catalog changes. Experiments and partial-audience events affect the online store; ads and feeds may continue showing different information. Full-audience changes can reach other applicable surfaces, but connected systems update on their own schedules.

For an advertised product, write down which offer the ad shows and which offer a visitor can receive. Do not start a price experiment until the advertising owner has reviewed that difference. Possible approaches include pausing affected ads or choosing a full-audience change, depending on the purpose of the promotion.

Skip a catalog experiment when your team cannot explain the control assortment, identify inherited products, or verify the ending. First establish a dependable regional setup. If you need help tracing overlapping catalogs or testing a custom storefront, our Shopify development services can help turn the intended assortment into a verified customer journey.