Why You Should Monitor Your MAP Policy

Several clothing and food brands develop partnerships with smaller businesses with the capacity to sell their products and services faster and more efficiently. After all, it can be more costly for, example, Brand A to sell their jeans and jackets in Alaska or Hawaii if nobody in that state sold the brand’s clothes in retail.

Having somebody else sell your products and services on your behalf, however, can be challenging, especially when it comes to the pricing. Since the retailer knows that they are the only ones in town selling the brand, they may think that it’s alright for to name the price for your products and services. That’s where the concept of minimum advertised prices (MAP) comes in.

MAPs

Price Manager says brands and retailers agree on a specific MAP range, with sufficient margins to allow retailers to earn and to maintain the level of quality and presentation that the brand wants. In 2007, the Supreme Court even ruled for the brand owners to establish MAP policies, forbidding the retailers to advertise a different set of prices. In most laws, however, enforcement is still a huge challenge.

MAP Monitoring

Across the country, some retailers still break MAP agreements. This is where MAP policy monitoring comes in. A company or brand can manually monitor its MAP policies though spreadsheets, online browsing, and keeping tabs of what retailers or resellers sell the brand’s products for.

Advantages

However, even with active manual MAP monitoring, violations still exist. With the help of technology, service providers have develop efficient systems to cut the time, effort, and man hours involved in manual MAP monitoring. You can input your products and the system will conduct a web search for pricing information multiple times daily. MAP violations will be flagged and recorded, notifying you through a complete report at the end of a business day.

With automated MAP policy monitoring, you can also trace who broke your MAP first and cross-reference violators in your customer database. The hourly search also enables you to identify repeat offenders.

If you want to build good relationships with your retailers, you first have to trust them. With advanced MAP monitoring, you can determine who you can and cannot trust in growing your business. Everyone wants to make a profit, but as the brand owner, you have the right to make the calls in your product and services pricing.