Configurable Products let your customers select the variant they desire by choosing options. For example, you sell t-shirts in two colors and three sizes. You’d create the six variants as individual products (with their own skus) and then add these six to a configurable product from where customers can choose size and color, then add to cart. If desired you could also have customers search for “red medium t-shirt” and land on the specific page for this variant.
Complex products in Magento are a way to consolidate product variants onto a single product info page in the front-end. The variants themselves are actually simple products and have their own SKUs and stock management. This is very powerful - it allows you to let customers search for the individual variants, but browse only to the consolidated product pages. Here are some selected options of Magento catalog management:
- Create Store-specific attributes on the fly
- Simple, Configurable (e.g. size, color, etc.), Bundled and Grouped Products
- Downloadable/Digital Products, Virtual Products
- Customer Personalized Products - upload text for embroidery, monogramming, etc.
- Inventory Management with Backordered items
- Tax Rates per location, customer group and product type
- Advanced Pricing Rules and support for Special Prices
