Merchandising for B2B: How Distributors and Manufacturers Can Use AI to Drive Sales & Loyalty

B2B merchandising has always been harder than B2C but with AI-driven merchandising, it doesn't have to be.

Distributors and manufacturers manage catalogs with thousands to millions of SKUs, each packed with technical attributes, specifications, pricing rules, availability constraints, and customer-specific entitlements. Most teams spend the majority of their time just maintaining this complexity. That leaves very little time for what actually drives growth: strategic merchandising.

As B2B eCommerce accelerates toward 2026, the companies that win won’t be the ones manually tweaking rules, they’ll be the ones that use AI-driven merchandising to automate, personalize, and optimize every buyer journey.

Quick summary:

AI merchandising for B2B merchandising is easier to manage when you pair merchandising rules with behavior-based boosting. The AI Multiplier boosts search results based on behavior on your website, and Boost and Bury lets you emphasize (boost) or move down in the search results (bury) for specific items. For audience targeting, use Visitor Targets and apply Visibility Rules when the Visitor Target isn’t met.

The B2B Merchandising Reality: Complex Data, Limited Time

Most B2B products don’t have five or ten attributes. They have dozens, even hundreds.

Material type, compliance standards, measurements, warehouse availability, customer-specific pricing, contract eligibility, regional restrictions, the list goes on. Merchandising teams are buried in operational work just to keep catalogs accurate.

As a result:

• Merchandising rules are limited in impact, or overly complex to setup
• Rules are static and hard to maintain
• Testing and optimization rarely happen
• Personalization is limited or nonexistent

In many organizations, merchandising becomes reactive instead of strategic.

And yet, B2B buyers expect more than ever.

The Problem with Manual Merchandising Rules

Some B2B merchandisers attempt to overcome this complexity by building rule-based merchandising logic, boosting certain products, burying others, or creating campaigns but they lack the ability to do so for specific segments.

While this approach works in theory, it breaks down at scale by not being able to recognize who is interacting with the site.

Manual rules are:

• Time-consuming to create
• Difficult to test across audiences
• Hard to reuse across search, categories, and recommendations
• Nearly impossible to optimize continuously

Most importantly, they don’t adapt to real buyer behavior in real time.

That’s where AI-driven merchandising becomes essential.

What Makes HawkSearch Different: Native Visitor/ Audience Targeting for Merchandising

HawkSearch gives B2B merchandisers a native Visitor/Audience Targeting layer that can be reused everywhere without duplicating indexes or requiring heavy engineering work.

This Visitor Target acts like a filter, similar to a facet such as brand or category. But instead of filtering products by attributes, it filters products based on who the visitor is.

That means you can merchandise differently based on:

• Company or account
• Location or region
• Warehouse availability
• Pricing tiers or contracts
• Roles, permissions, or entitlements

The same Visitor Target can be attached across:

• Search results
• Category pages
• Merchandising campaigns
• AI-powered recommendations
• Reporting and analytics

This “attach the same target everywhere” workflow is exceptionally  straightforward and critically, it’s native. Other platforms can attempt this, but typically require custom development or duplicated data structures to make it work.

Why Contextual Search Makes B2B Merchandising So Hard

Another big challenge in B2B eCommerce is that search is highly contextual.

A single query like “hammer drill” can mean completely different results depending on the visitor.

For example:

• A buyer in Texas may only be entitled to purchase 30% of the catalog
• A contractor in New York may need items available for same-day warehouse pickup
• Two buyers from different companies may see entirely different pricing
• Availability, compliance, or inventory may vary by region

If these contexts aren’t handled correctly:

• Buyers see products they can’t actually purchase
• Inventory appears available when it’s not
• Pricing changes unexpectedly at checkout
• Trust is broken and buyers abandon

In B2B, surfacing the right products is just as important as not surfacing the wrong ones.

How HawkSearch Solves Contextual B2B Merchandising

HawkSearch natively understands these contextual use cases through Audience Targeting.

Instead of duplicating entire search indexes for every pricing or availability scenario as many other platforms require, HawkSearch uses one index, with variables applied dynamically.

For example:

• Geographic pricing = one value indexed for Visitor Target A, another for Visitor Target B, another for Visitor Target C and so on.
• ‍Geographic availability = another indexed value tied directly to specific Visitor Targets.

Those values are applied at query time, ensuring results are accurate, compliant, and personalized without multiplying data complexity behind the scenes.

This approach dramatically reduces engineering overhead while increasing merchandising flexibility.

Smarter Merchandising with AI, Targets, and Automation

Because Visitor Targeting is built into HawkSearch at a foundational level, all merchandising and AI features can leverage it.

That means you can:

• Create boost and bury rules for a specific warehouse
• Personalize campaigns by company or customer group
• Deliver recommendations tailored to entitlements and availability
• Analyze performance by visitor segment to see what works and what doesn’t

Instead of guessing, merchandisers gain real intelligence into how different audiences behave and convert.

Merchandising for 2026: Built for B2B Reality

As B2B eCommerce evolves, merchandising can no longer be manual, static, or one-size-fits-all.

The future is:

• AI-driven, not rule-heavy
• Personalized, not generic
• Automated, but still controllable
• Built for complex catalogs and real-world constraints

HawkSearch enables distributors and manufacturers to move beyond basic merchandising and toward a system that adapts to every buyer, every search, and every interaction.

Because in B2B, great merchandising isn’t about showing more products.

It’s about showing the right products, to the right buyer, at the right moment.