Why having a MAP Minimum Advertising Price policy

Enforcing minimum advertised prices (MAP) in Amazon and across all marketplaces is important to protect your brand online and keep your product interesting for your future resellers.

This is an important aspect of your brand protection strategy and here is a few key elements to consider;

Definition of Minimum Advertised Price (MAP)

The minimum advertised pricing (MAP) is the lowest price a retailer can advertise the product for sale. For example, Nike may have a MAP price of $49 for one of their shoes. That means all the advertizement should not display a SALE under that price. The important here is to not confuse it with the MSRP or the manufacturer's suggested retail price, a price recommended for the sale of an item in all retail outlets. A vendor can require retailers to sell its products at the MSRP and refuse to sell its products to a discounter if they price products below it in that case the MAP is the MSRP.

Important, the MAP does not refer to the lowest price they can sell it for in their store—just the lowest that a reseller can show online or in an advertisement.

Why MAP agreements exist:

Setup fair competition and price across all channels

Maintain brand value

Allow all sellers to compete with larger retailers

Prevent underpricing and price war

Protect seller margins

The MAP creates a consistent pricing strategy. Take Apple products, you can buy it anywhere, the iPhone will be the same regardless of the seller. Only Apple can change the price and all retailers will follow it.

The MAP is very important on a marketplace like Amazon, where the price is the key competitive advantage to shoppers.

How Amazon deal with MAP Violators

Unfortunately, when a MAP agreement is violated on Amazon, brands can be left at a disadvantage because Amazon ultimately does not take a major role in seller pricing agreements. If manufacturers discover a reseller has violated their MAP agreement on Amazon, they can address the reseller directly. To address a MAP violator (on a product by product basis) a manufacturer should:

1.Identify all resellers with MAP violations

2.Communicate to all resellers about MAP policy enforced

3.Remind resellers that they must respect MAP or they will be banned as a seller for all products

4. Give warning before banning a rogue seller

5. Continue to monitor MAP pricing within all sale Chanel

Establish a MAP policy is a key element to put in place across all your retailers especially on Amazon. There is a lot of cases been reported that costumer go on a physical store to check around product and then check online to get the best price on Amazon. There is nothing more frustrating to a Brick & Mortar retailers to see all his sale been stole by Amazon.