What is a product attribute or variant?

Point of Sale (POS) Glossary

A product with different attributes, such as sizes or colors, is a variant of that item. For example, if you had a t-shirt with color and size attributes, a large red shirt, a small red shirt, and a large blue shirt would be viewed by your point of sale system as different variants.

A business may create a unique stock-keeping unit (SKU) to represent each product variant. Though variants lend complexity to managing inventory, they often increase sales as customers like to personalize things by choosing attributes. Additionally, they may purchase multiple variants.

A point of sale system might let customers choose a variant by selecting options aligned with each SKU. At a POS register, a cashier can assist a buyer by selecting options for them. At an eCommerce store, the user could choose from selectable dropdown boxes themselves.