Comment: Up to Release 4.5B, "Internet customers" were managed as customers in the R/3 system. When an Internet customer was created, the customer's data relating to company code and sales area was determined from a template customer that was created for the SAP Online Store or SAP Retail Store. In Release 4.6A, customers in the IAC SAP Online Store or SAP Retail Store can be managed as private or corporate customers. You differentiate between these two types of customer in the form of address (title) and by the way the name fields are used. Company customers are managed in the R/3 system as before, and the above-mentioned template customer method is still used when creating a corporate customer.
The indicator "Allow consumer maintenance" has the following effects on only private customers of Online Stores or Retail Stores: If the indicator is not selected, the "Internet private customer" is managed in the same way as customers were in the past in the R/3 system, and the above-mentioned template customer method is used. In technical terms, a private customer is therefore exactly the same as a corporate customer. If the indicator is selected, the "Internet private customers" are managed in the R/3 system as R/3 consumers. A master record with minimal data is created for the consumer using a reference customer. During processing, the organizational data of the reference customer is imported. You define the reference customer yourself under Master data / Customer / Business partner / Consumer / Reference customer. Consequences: Comment: A R/3 consumer is a customer in the R/3 customer master with a private address. As an "Internet private customer" is now a R/3 consumer, the template customer mechanism of the R/3 consumer, not the "Internet customer" method used up to Release 4.5B in SAP Online or SAP Retail Store. Consequences resulting from this: (i) The "Internet private customer" can be modeled as a consumer, which is what he/she actually is. The amount of data is reduced. However, the result of this is that only one reference customer of the consumer can be used for a sales area (before, different template customers could be used within a sales area for different distribution channels). A further advantage is that the search help specially created for consumers can also be used for the Internet private customers. (ii) In SAP Retail Store, the number of the reference customer of the consumer is used during simulation of the order if a customer number is not entered. (iii) Old data, i.e. customers created before 4.6A, are customer master records, and therefore there is a difference between this and the new data, which is created as consumer records. To avoid this division, SAP offers a conversion report (RINTCON_C) to convert the old data, which are all "Internet private customers" as a result of the creation method, into consumers. This functionality is described in the report documentation.
Hierarchy 
BBPCRM (Software Component) BBPCRM
CRM-MD-PCT (Application Component) Product Catalog
WWMB (Package) Advertising medium: BAPI & IAC prod.catalog
Basic Data 
Data Type 
Further Characteristics 
Field Label 
Documentation 
History 
