How to Restrict Products by Specific Customer Groups in Magento 2?

The title may seem confusing to most. After all, why would a store owner wish to hide products from certain customers when the goal is to generate the maximum number of sales. Of course, by hiding products from the audience, the percentage of sales may go down. Right? Well, that’s not the case.

Restricting products is not just necessary in some cases but can also improve your Magento 2 store’s sales. In this article, we’ll go through the various steps required to restrict products by specific customer groups in Magento 2. However, let’s first understand the logic behind these restrictions.

Why Restrict Product by Customer Group in Magento 2?

Tailored Experience

You can easily offer a personalised experience to different customer groups through product restrictions. For example, your repeat customers are often the ones that account for the greatest share in your store’s revenue. Naturally, you will want to reserve some special products only for them. This is your way of rewarding them for their repeat purchases.

Exclusivity

Why do people buy luxury or pricey products? The answer is exclusivity. After all, most people worldwide cannot afford to spend thousands of dollars on luxury items. Thus, buying luxury products worth thousands of dollars help them stand out from the crowd and creates a sense of exclusivity.

Magento 2 store owners can easily create a sense of exclusivity by restricting certain products to select few customer groups such as newsletter subscribers, loyalty program members, or others. When others see these customer groups being rewarded with extra perks or special products, they would want to sign up as well.

Price Differentiation

Magento 2 stores can set up different pricing tiers for each customer group. This form of pricing is an effective way to maximise your store’s revenue and ensure that each group pays according to its capacity or expectations.

Discounts

Likewise, store owners can offer special discounts to select few customer groups without exposing the offer to others.

Compliance

Furthermore, another reason to restrict products by customer groups is because of compliance reasons. Globally, alcohol and tobacco products cannot be sold to minors. Thus, by restricting these products to under 18s, you can protect your store against regulatory action. Another way to ensure compliance is by adding age verification in Magento 2 .

Research Purposes

Suppose you wish to launch a new product in the market. Naturally, you would want to know how the market would respond to it. Thus, instead of offering the product to all users, you can opt to introduce it to a specific customer group. This can provide you with valuable insights regarding the pricing, features, and other aspects.

B2B vs B2C

If your business model is B2B and B2C, you would want to restrict wholesale products to wholesale customers only and vice versa.

How to Restrict Products by Customer Group in Magento 2?

The best way to do so is through an extension such as Restrict Products by Customer Group by FME . You can create rules and apply conditions to it to hide/restrict pages, categories, and subcategories. Here is how you can do this:

Install the Extension.
Go to FME EXTENSIONS ->Manage Rules.
To create a new rule, click ‘Add Rule’ and a new menu ‘Rule Information’ will appear.

Under the ‘General’ tab

Enter the title of the rule
Select the store view by which you want to impose the restriction
Select the customer group by which you want to restrict access
Select a CMS page if you want to restrict a CMS page
Set the ‘Status’ to Enabled in order for the rule to be processed
Write a custom error message to display

Under ‘Conditions’ Tab

Add conditions to restrict certain pages or categories based on the attributes given in the drop down. In the example below, we have restricted ‘Bag’s category whose value is 4.

Redirect Restricted Users to other Pages

The extension gives the option to redirect restricted users to other pages of the store. For example, you can redirect retailers who are trying to access wholesale products to the retail product’s page.

Live Demo | Buy Now

Magento 2 Restrict Products by Customer Group Extension – Top Use Cases

As mentioned earlier, the extension offers numerous features, including block specific products, categories, subcategories, CMS pages etc. from selected customers/customer groups. The 4 most common uses cases are highlighted below.

Restrict Category

With Magento 2 restrict products extension, you can restrict any category by any customer group. The following example has restricted ‘Bags’ category. You have access to the other categories ‘Fitness Equipment’ & ‘Watches’.

Example Demo: Restrict Category | Buy Now

Restrict CMS Pages

Restrict one or more CMS pages such as ‘About Us’, ‘Privacy Policy’, ‘Customer Service’, Contact Us’ etc. In the example below, we have restricted the 'Privacy Policy' page.

Example Demo: Restrict CMS Pages|Buy Now

Restrict Specific Products

You can restrict specific products by specifying the attributes in the ‘Conditions’ tab. Following example restricts products whose ‘Climate’ attribute is ‘Cool’.

Example Demo: Restrict Specific Products | Buy Now

Final Thoughts on Magento Restrict Products by Customer Group

This concludes our article on how to restrict products by customer group in Magento 2. We highly recommend merchants to set up at least a few restrictions and monitor their performance. Based on our experience and client stories, most report a positive impact. If you have any questions regarding the extension, you can contact the support team by submitting a ticket here.

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