Context

Online retailers are especially dependent on schema.org vocabulary as a standardized way to describe the evolving status of their products to a variety of systems including search engines. Today, there are a number of ways that a product can be described using the ItemAvailabilityattribute.

Problem

I believe there's a significant gap in this list, especially given the current state of consumer demand for online shopping, the encumbered state of our global supply chains during a pandemic, and our commitment to provide the best possible information available to customers.

The current version of the schema.org vocabulary includes PreOrder as a enumeration member of ItemAvailability. As I understand it, PreOrder refers to an item that is available for purchase but has not been carried by a business before.

Proposal

I would like to propose the addition of BackOrder to this list of members, because I believe there is a unique difference between PreOrder and BackOrder.

Details

As I understand it, BackOrder refers to an item that is out of stock, still able to be purchased and will be available again for customers at some point in the future, rather than being Discontinued.

Inclusion of BackOrder in the list of enumeration members for ItemAvailability will allow consumers of schema.org to describe the status of an item with more granularity than OutOfStock. In addition, it will allow other major business to utilize an updated vocabulary to better serve customers with their products (ie. https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6324448?hl=en)