Complete Guide to Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) Monitoring – 2024 Edition

MAP, or Minimum Advertised Price, sets the benchmark for product pricing, representing the minimum allowed price for authorized resellers in the United States, Canada and Mexico to advertise the product. For brand owners, preserving market value is crucial. When a retailer, authorized or unauthorized seller, or wholesaler offers a price below the permitted lowest price, it damages the brand’s reputation. A strong MAP monitoring platform is vital to track, report, and enforce such violations, ensure brand integrity and maintain a healthy brand-reseller relationship.

What is MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) Monitoring?

MAP monitoring lets you track Minimum Advertised Prices across online channels to ensure your pricing policies are followed by resellers, wholesalers and distributors.

You may wonder why MAP violations have been a persistent problem for years across many verticals. Kellogg School of Management paper ‘Determinants of MAP Violations‘ written by Ayelet Israeli, Eric T. Anderson, and Anne T. Coughlan, specifically notes “We find that higher prices, free shipping, larger assortment size and authorization to distribute are associated with lower violation rates. In contrast, high distribution intensity is associated with higher violation rates. We also show that retailers are more likely to violate MAP when the policy is expected to expire soon. When a pricing violation occurs, we show that the extent of violation (offered price relative to MAP) is less when shipping is free, retailers are authorized, and distribution is more intensive.” 

To simplify this complex repetitive MAP monitoring task and offer guidance on managing the MAP channel program, GrowByData offers an automated MAP monitoring and enforcement professionals service to support the brand’s or authorized wholesaler’s channel monitoring business.

What are the Benefits of MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) Tracking for a Brand Channel Manager?

1. Track and Identify MAP Violations: GrowByData quickly identifies real-time violations by continuously monitoring retailer prices through our dashboard. This enables prompt detection and correction of MAP violations.
2. Enable Data-Driven Decision-Making: MAP monitoring provides valuable insights into pricing trends and marketing dynamics of resellers, facilitating smart decision-making for channel management.
3. Improve Relationships with Authorized Sellers: Proactively monitoring and enforcing MAP policies demonstrates commitment to supporting authorized sellers, and fostering a positive relationships with them.
4. Protect Your Brand Value: Breaching minimum advertised prices can negatively impact your brand’s value. Monitoring ensures authorized resellers adhere to MAP, reducing the risk of devaluing your brand. You can also find unauthorized sellers that may be carrying your products. You may also spot potentially fraudulent products.

How to NOT Select the Wrong MAP Monitoring Tool?

Channel violators and marketing platforms are constantly changing.  Hence, a one-size-fits-all tool will NOT serve your needs. So you need a customized MAP enforcement solution to constantly change and ensure you monitor and enforce MAP policies.

You also need a solution partner who is keen to understand your needs and adjust their tools and services to align with your channel requirements. If you don’t consider these, you may have more work to do enforce your MAP policy. You may see many wrong MAP violations and miss the fraudulent ones. We have learned these through our years of MAP monitoring across small, mid, and large brands across categories. Read more on GrowByData’s Guide on Mistakes that Buyers Make Before Purchasing MAP Monitoring Software.

How is GrowByData’s Solution Designed to Make MAP Policy Enforcement Easy?

GrowByData’s Map Monitoring Software ensures precise and proactive identification of MAP violations. What sets GrowByData apart from the other automated tools is that they may not account for your brand’s unique business model.

Here is an example of the MAP report you get to show violations by reseller by day.

Here are 8 features of GrowByData’s Map Monitoring Solution –

1. Accurate Product Discovery: Ensure precise matching of your products at the variant level across channels with –
   • Auto-Matching
   • Human Matching
   • Hybrid – Auto & Human
2. Easily Track Product SKUs/Controlled MAP Compliance Monitoring: Easily monitor product SKUs and control MAP compliance based on your business needs.
3. Monitor by Authorized & Unauthorized Sellers: Track and differentiate between authorized and unauthorized sellers using our dashboard, pinpointing MAP violators with precise data for future actions.
4. Identify New MAP Violators: Identify new MAP violators effortlessly through the GrowByData dashboard, allowing proactive measures against emerging MAP violations.
5. Customized Weekly Summarized Findings include:
   Weekly Insights to ensure you stay informed without having to log into the dashboard. See invaluable data such as –
   1. SKUs with the Most MAP Violations
   2. Resellers (Authorized & Unauthorized) with most Violations
   3. Platforms (Google Shopping, Amazon, and others) with the most Violations.
   4. Countries with the most channel violations – US or Canada or Mexico

6. MAP Violation Alerts: Get real-time MAP Violation Alerts for reported violations to brand owners and authorized dealers.
7. MAP Violation Screenshots for Proof: Enforce map policies effectively with crucial MAP violation screenshots provided by GrowByData, that serve as evidence when issuing warnings and enforcing compliance.
8. Offer MAP Holiday Pricing: Rely on the GrowByData feature that allows you to turn off monitoring and enforcement during major holidays like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Memorial Day, etc, and then turn back on again. Benefit from the custom MAP monitoring to customize your outreach and enforcement without annoying your good resellers.

How to Enforce MAP Pricing?

This involves channel managers and brand owners notifying authorized sellers to comply with established MAP prices. This includes detecting violators, communicating the MAP policy, and taking necessary actions such as banning non-compliant retailers. The brand or the wholesaler has the authority to implement the sales bans. Retailers can utilize our platform, analyze violation data, and promptly report violations customizing the MAP enforcement service per their reseller nuances.

How Does GrowByData’s Minimum Price Monitoring Software & Service Make Enforcement Easy?

1. Sends Map Violation Email Alerts to Sellers

GrowByData Map Monitoring platform tactfully alerts authorized sellers about Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) violations, ensuring effective communication without irritating resellers. This approach maintains a positive relationship with authorized sellers while addressing necessary compliance issues respectfully. You might want to know more about Minimum Advertised Price Violations Free Email Template

2. Allows Sending Configurable Email Messages to Violators

GrowByData allows flexible configuration of email content and templates tailored for communication with both authorized and unauthorized MAP violators. For authorized sellers inadvertently violating MAP, communication can be informative and collaborative, seeking cooperation in rectifying pricing issues. Messages to unauthorized violators can be more direct, outlining consequences and necessary actions for compliance.

3. Offers Customized Follow-up Actions

GrowByData platform allows easy customization of follow-up actions for MAP violators based on specific needs. This customization can involve setting up automated follow-up processes (3 or more follow-ups) to address MAP violations efficiently. The platform empowers tailored responses to several violations, ensuring corrective actions align with brand policies and strategies.

4. Monitors the open rate of email alerts sent to MAP violators

With GrowByData, you can track the open rate of alert emails sent to MAP violators. This feature offers insights into how recipients, especially violators, interact with the communication, helping you analyze their engagement and assess the impact of your efforts in addressing MAP cosmpliance.

5. Provides Visual Proof of Violations

With the GrowByData Map tracking platform, brand owners and authorized dealers can use real-time screenshots as tangible proof of MAP violations. We know resellers may change prices back to the right number when you email them. However, the snapshot allows you to substantiate claims when addressing violations with sellers.

Conclusion

We know MAP violation monitoring is challenging. You may be exposed to multiple MAP monitoring tools – starting with the very cheap. You will find tools like Wiser to Price2Spy to Pricespider to more. Beware of the cheap ones and the automated ones. You get what you pay for. You may not trust the data. And if you have a question, you may waste hours trying to solve it yourself. You can’t customize anything. And you get no guidance on how other channel managers are navigating the challenging waters of MAP policy enforcement in ecommerce.

We have been monitoring MAP for years and know a cookie-cutter tool is not the answer to solving a brand’s complex MAP monitoring needs. We are constantly adapting our platform and map monitoring service to best serve our brand and wholesaler brand clients’ MAP compliance needs. Our goal is to be the best easy-to-use minimum advertisement price monitoring tool and solution partner for our clients and allow channel managers to grow their online business well without keeping them up at night with MAP monitoring issues. Our goal is to make it easy for you. We know you are busy and have thousands of things going on. You don’t want to worry about data. You don’t want to learn a new tool and spend hours figuring this out.

We are here to make MAP enforcement easy.  Learn more about how our Enterprise MAP Monitoring Software Solution helps you enforce your MAP Price Policies. Please contact us today at info@growbydata.com to discuss your needs, and we will happily share our best practices and help!