# Items relationships: a retailer journey


Retailers sell **items** ([What do we mean by "items" ?](article:20)) to their **customers** .
These items have **characteristics**. 
They can be **sold in different ways** : 
- Offline (Brick and mortar points of sale).
- Online. 
Each business has its specificities and the purchasing patterns can vary over **time** : 
- While some items can be sold all the time, others can have a seasonal sale cycle. The retailer's strategy can vary over time. 
- Some items will be often bought, others not.

All that components make analyzing relationships between the items sold a complex task: the **Market Basket Analysis** will give you flexibility in that journey.

- [Learn how I could handle purchasing patterns varying over time](article:36).
- [Learn how I could handle purchasing patterns varying with other dataset dimensions](article:37).