What is Entity Resolution?

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Entity resolution is the process of determining when different names, records, or references describe the same real-world entity. It helps data platforms, search engines, and AI systems merge duplicate or inconsistent information about customers, products, brands, or organizations.

The problem appears whenever the same real-world entity is represented differently across systems. “Acme Ltd,” “ACME Europe,” and account 004381 may refer to the same customer; two supplier feeds may describe the same product with different identifiers. Entity resolution uses identifiers, rules, similarity, and reference data to determine which records should be linked or merged.

Typical ecommerce entity-resolution use cases include:

• Matching product records from suppliers, marketplaces, PIM, and ERP systems.

• Deduplicating customer or company accounts across CRM, commerce, and support platforms.

• Connecting brand names and aliases to a canonical organization or product entity.

• Reconciling locations, addresses, and business units during migration or integration projects.

Accurate entity resolution improves analytics, personalization, product data, and AI understanding because systems stop treating duplicates as separate things. Poor matching can be equally damaging: two distinct products or customers may be merged incorrectly. Enterprise implementations therefore use confidence thresholds, deterministic identifiers where possible, and manual review for ambiguous cases.

Example: During migration, a team may discover the same company stored under separate CRM and ERP identifiers. Entity resolution links those records so order history and pricing are attached to the correct customer account.