In the iOS App Store, you can create subscription groups, which I believe allows the app to (if coded as such) display different subscription options to different groups of users. For example, grouping magazine subscriptions by genre.
Is there anything like this for the Google Play store, or would I need to do the groupings myself within the app?
Although I am not sure at this time, but I don't think Google Play provides the equivalent of a Subscription group. At the time of this writing, I am working on the same and new updates will publish edits here.
There is a catch here,
which I believe allows the app to (if coded as such) display different subscription options to different groups of users
Although, subscription groups can be used for the purpose described above, they are not inherently meant for the same. Subscription groups are meant to group different subscription products so that the user can purchase only one of them at the same time.
You can view a subscription group as a product/ service your app offers and the subscription products under them as the Plans under the same. For example, for a news app, you may offer a subscription product to your users with different plans like Single Category Monthly, All Monthly, Single Category Annual, All Annual. The single category app may provide news only in one single chosen category like sports, entertainment, politics etc. The user can choose to change between plans any time but can subscribe to only ONE plan at a time.
Also, as you would comprehend, some of these plans are higher levels of services than others. Based on your business definition, you can put these plans at different levels. That will determine if the user is upgrading/downgrading/cross grading while changing a plan. For example, in this case you may have two levels:
Level 1 may have All Monthly and All annual.
Level 2 may have both the single plans.
1 -> 2 will be downgrade, 2 -> 1 will be upgrade, 1 -> 1, 2 -> 2 will be cross grade.
In Google Play Billing, an upgrade or downgrade will be performed by setting the oldSku while making a purchase. If the oldSku is set, Google Play Store will consider it as an upgrade/downgrade.
However, I am not sure at this point how the App Store determines if it's a upgrade/ downgrade / crossgrade. May be based on the price (unlike Apple).