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Mystery Box item selection criteria
There are numerous rules available in the app that can be combined with each other to create the desired item-selection pattern for mystery boxes. This help article explains each of these rules in detail.
This guide explains how the app selects items from a Product Pool in a Mystery Box orders. Each rule is described clearly with simple explanations and practical examples.
1. How many products should be picked from this Product Pool?
A) Fixed Number of Selected Items
You define exactly how many items should be selected from this pool per quantity of the mystery box in the order. For example if the quantity ordered for mystery box is 2 then app will pick 2 items.
How it works:
If you enter 1, the app will always pick 1 item from the pool.
Example:
If the product pool has 10 items and you set it to 1, the app will choose exactly one item from those 10 every time.
B) Variable Number of Items — Limited by Cumulative Retail Price
The app will keep adding items until the total cumulative retail price of the selected items reaches your target.
Example:
Target retail value = $50.
App may pick variable number of items like 2–3 items until the Cumulative retail price does not exceed the threshold number given by you.
C) Variable Number of Items — Limited by Cumulative "Cost Per Item"
The app will keep picking items until the total cumulative unit cost of the selected items(your internal cost price) hits the threshold limit.
Example:
Unit cost = $20.
If each item costs around $5, the app may pick up to 4 items.
2. How products will be picked from the Product Pool?
This is where you define as per which criteria items will get selected from this product pool the available criteria are as following.
A) Random
Items gets picked randomly and each items in the product pool has equal weightage.
Example:
If 10 items exist in the pool and 3 are out of stock, and the number of items to be picked from this pool is 1, then the probability of picking each item is 1/7.
B) Weighted Random
Items are selected randomly but items with higher weights have a greater chance of being selected. You can use this kind of item picking for sweepstake kind of campaigns.
Example:
- Item A weight = 80
- Item B weight = 15
- Item C weight = 5
Item A will be picked more frequently. Which simply means the probability of picking each item will be:
Item A = 80/100
Item B = 15/100
Item C = 5/100.
Here, you need to enter the total number of orders you are expecting for the campaign, which can be anywhere between 100 to 100,000.
Important to note:
We do not guarantee that exactly 80 units of Item A will be picked by the end of the campaign. These values represent probabilities — meaning, for each individual order, the chance of picking an item is:
- Item A: 80/100
- Item B: 15/100
- Item C: 5/100
However, due to the probabilistic nature of item selection, the final counts after 100 orders may not be exactly 80, 15, and 5.
3. Inventory-Based Picking Priority
You can tell the app how to prioritize items based on inventory levels. This item-picking criterion is usually useful when the goal of the campaign is to sell out items that have the highest or lowest inventory — essentially when you want to clear extra stock.
A) Highest Inventory First
The app picks items with the most stock.
Example:
- Item A: 100
- Item B: 85
- Item C: 5
App will pick Item A first. Until the inventory of item A is becomes lower than item B then item B will get picked.
B) Lowest Inventory First
The app picks the lowest in-stock item first (but ignores out‑of‑stock items).
Example:
- Item A: 50 units
- Item B: 10 units
- Item C: 2 units
App will pick Item C first. Until the total inventory goes to 0 then next item will get picked.
C) Priority
You manually define the priority order.
The app always tries to pick top‑priority items first until they go out of stock.
Example:
- Item A Priority= 3
- Item B Priority= 2
- Item C Priority= 1
App will always try A first, then B, then C.
4. Repeat Policy for Product Selection
This controls whether item selected can be repeated within the same order.
A) Unique Selection
The app tries to pick unique items.
If more items are needed and unique items are not enough, it will pick in‑stock items which could be repeated.
Example:
If the box needs 2 items and the quantity in order is also 2 then
- The app will try to pick 4 different items.
B) Repeat Selection
The app is allowed to pick the same item more than once as long as it avoids out‑of‑stock items.
Example:
If the box needs 3 items:
- App may pick Item A twice and Item B once.