Individual Product Special Price: A specific discount or promotional price set manually inside a single product's inventory/edit page (e.g., setting a regular $100 item to a fixed special price of $80 just for that one product).
Offer Created via Offers Screen (Category or Campaign Offer): A rule-based discount created in your marketing/promotions module that applies dynamically to a group of products, such as a Category Sale ("20% off all Gardening Tools") or a Flash Sale ("15% off everything launched this week").
Which One Takes Precedence? (The E-Commerce Standard)
In standard e-commerce architecture, the Individual Product Special Price almost always takes the Highest Priority.
How it works in practice:
If a product has an Individual Product Special Price explicitly assigned to it, the system will completely bypass any broad category or campaign offer coming from the Offers Screen.
Example Scenario:
Base Price: $100
Offer Screen Rule: Category-wide Flash Sale gives 20% off all items in the "Plants" category (making it $80).
Individual Product Special Price: Set directly on Product A's inventory page as a fixed special price of $75.
The Result: When a customer views Product A, the system detects the individual special price and displays $75, ignoring the 20% category sale rule.
Why E-Commerce Systems Use This Priority:
Prevents Unintended Over-Discounts (Margin Protection): Merchandisers often set manual product-level prices for clearance items, high-cost items, or special vendor agreements. If a blanket 50% category sale stacked on top of an already custom-reduced product price, the item might sell at a heavy loss.
Intentional Control: An individual price acts as a hard override. If an admin goes into a specific product and sets a custom special price, it signals an intentional, manual decision that overrides automated rules.