Product Coding

Correct product coding is foundational for data exchange between retailers and suppliers (ordering product, reconciling transactions, collaborating on inventory management, best-seller lists, etc.). It also enables effective inventory-performance analysis by product type and category, and will lead to more streamlined POS updating that cuts time and costs, improves data accuracy, and allows retailers to spend more time with customers.

Product codes involve two primary areas:

• Common use of Universal Product Codes (UPCs) that uniquely identify products and their manufacturers for ordering, invoicing, e-commerce, database updating, etc.

• Product category codes, called BISAC or Christian Product Category codes, enable better sales performance through more effective in-store merchandising, easier customer buying decisions, and improved inventory analysis and management.

UPC codes are administered in North America by the nonprofit global standards group, GS1 US (formerly the  Uniform Code Council), which assigns and ensures unique product numbers. The ISBN-13 is part of this group’s ongoing standards initiatives. However, the U.S. ISBN Agency actually manages and assigns ISBN codes. The 13-digit ISBN is the first North American product code using the global EAN product-coding structure.

Book and Bible Christian Product Category codes have been integrated into the broader U.S. publishing industry's BISAC category coding. BISAC is the standards group for the Book Industry Study Group. Click the first link at the top right to learn about the CPC-to-BISAC transition.

The ONIX standard (Online Information Exchange) standardizes how publishers exchange book and bibliographic data electronically.