The content management system should contain as much technical information as possible about the products. If the information is granular enough it will enable features such as detailed product comparisons and advanced searching in web applications and even feature-based up-sell in e-commerce sites. The possibilities are virtually endless if your data is good enough.

Print publishing, especially catalogues, is very different from electronic publishing. The main difference from a design point of view is that space costs. The more space you give each product the more the catalogue will cost to print. It is not economically viable to include large feature comparison tables for all products in the printed catalogue.
This means that information that could be displayed on the web as:

Height (mm)	200
Width (mm)	100
Depth (mm)	50
Colour	Black
Power (W)	1300
Voltage (V)	230

might need to be condensed into:
"HxWxD: 200x100x50 mm, Black, 1300W, 230V"
to fit in the catalogue.

We know how to do this automatically without duplicating the information. The value "200" for height should only exist once in the database. Duplicated information increases the risk of mistakes and data mismatches.