"Assortment" is a rather specific word that is most often used in trade. In the article we will just talk about its meaning and application.
Origin
In fact, this is transliteration from the French word assortment. The lexical meaning of the word “assortment” is also taken from French. There are several words in Russian that have a similar meaning. For example, the words “recruitment”, “composition”, “availability”, “selection”, “correlation” are variants of translation into Russian, so to speak, assortment is the meaning of the word assortment in Russian.
Application
Most often this word is used in the field of trade, here it has some shades. For example, when a store is meant having various departments, its assortment, all available goods will have the meaning of the word. More precisely, this value will reflect the same phrase with the prefix at the beginning - group. It will include various groups of goods: food products (which can also be divided into subsections), manufactured goods, household goods, etc.
If we are talking about a product of one department, it means its range, the meaning of the word will be slightly different. The variety of goods of one group will be implied. The phrase “expanded assortment” will convey a more precise meaning. This refers to various types of homogeneous goods. For example, the phrase "assortment of sweets" means all the names of sweets that are commercially available (or in stock).
Also, this word is used in production. In economics, when it comes to an entire country (its range), the meaning of the word has an even broader meaning. It is replaced by the phrase “gross domestic product”. Then the entire volume of goods, services, work performed in the country is implied. This indicator characterizes absolutely the entire economy of the country in a generalized form.