A variation is a child ASIN. The parent ASIN is an abstraction of the children items. For example, Shirt is a parent ASIN. Parent ASINs cannot be sold. A child ASIN of it would be a blue shirt, size 16, sold by MyApparelStore. This child ASIN is one of potentially many variations. The ways in which variations differ are called dimensions.

In the preceding example, size and color are the dimensions. Parent ASINs therefore return two related elements:

The following response snippet shows these elements.

<VariationDimensions>
  <VariationDimension>ClothingSize</VariationDimension>
  <VariationDimension>Color</VariationDimension>
</VariationDimensions>

The values returned by these elements are the dimensions listed in the child ASIN’s response, as shown.

<Item>
  ...
  <ItemAttributes>
    ...
    <ClothingSize>Large</ClothingSize>
    <Color>Black</Color>
    ...
  </ItemAttributes>
  ...
</Item>