Google Analytics 4 (GA4) ecommerce `view_item` with variants

I'm moving over to GA4 and implementing all of the recommended ecommerce events and hit a question that I'm struggling to find the answer to.

view_item should be used when a customer views an item. This event expects currency, value and items. value should contain the NETT price of the product. items is an array of products.

I (and I'm not going to be on my own here) have a number of products with variants - so maybe a glove with a Small, Medium & Large variant. How do I send this event?

Option 1:
List all the variants in the items array. This is going to skew the value field because the variants may have different prices.

Option 2:
Generate a view_item event for each variant. This seems to make the most sense, but nowhere in the documentation does it mention this as being the "correct" action.

Option 3:
Use a view_item_list event. This makes sense (there is no value field) apart from the fact you're not viewing a list/category. We're viewing a single product with different variants. The documentation doesn't clarify the difference between a view_item and view_item_list event - do they both get recorded in the same way?

I came here looking for the same answer If it helps, I'm going with Option 2. view_item_list I interpret as a product listing page or recommendations block. My only concern with that is it will inflate views for the "parent" product.

I think this is going a bit too deep for what GA4 is capable of.

In most cases, people view a product and not individual variants. So just sending the product and its id would make sense.

In the checkout events, variants are involved. In GA4 you can then add the item_variant property to identify which variant is involved. When sending cart data, individual items would be based on product id + variant name.

Saying that, I'm still guessing, as GA4 does not yet report at this level.

They are currently rolling out custom item dimensions, which means you can roll your own solution.

> Option 1: List all the variants in the items array. This is going to
> skew the value field because the variants may have different prices.

Option 1 strikes me as the solution that would cover the most ground. I don't know how much it matters that the view_item event would potentially show the wrong price, as it's not really a proper "ecommerce" event and so there's no value to report outside of potential sales. (But even there, would you really benefit from being able to report on a range of prices?)

For my purposes at least, what's important is being able to see how many times a product was viewed, and whether it was subsequently added to cart and purchased. This isn't possible if you don't add the product variant to the view_item event—instead you'd have to stitch together parent product views with child product conversions outside of GA.

This still leaves the issue of how to find value in the view_item_list event in relation to view_item if one refers to the parent product and the other refers to the child product.

Also for Option 2, if each view_item event is counted individually, then that might cause confusion if you ever want to compare # of product views across your catalog. Whichever product has the most variants will be skewed to look like it has the most views.