Hey all, any MAP guru's out there?


We have an item that has an MSRP of $233.95.



We have been reminded that the MAP pricing of the item is $199.99.



What has me confused is that all other suppliers with a map policy have the MSRP/MAP at the same price with no room to discount.



Anybody understand my confusion?

It's the first time I've seen this type of MAP pricing enforced. 50/50 on agreeing with it.

The biggest PITA is watching the competitor's not adhering to it. We're taking the necessary step but we don't see competitor's doing it. We drop back down, get the slap on the wrist email and raise back up. All the while, a competitor doesn't change at all... we point this out every time.

I'm still waiting to hear more about the statement that "merchants can sue manufacturer's" about this.

LOL... thanks bryan :) all in a days work, you picked it up quick and ran with it!

I just had another manufacturer call me and say we are not allowed to show any pricing on the internet. No passwords, not in shopping carts, not at checkout. I thought that was illegal too?

Gonna be pretty tough to sell their stuff, huh? If they have a sales manager, I'd like to know where he learned his marketing skills, and in what decade.

The majority of our larger manufacturers use MSRP and MAP pricing. Both mean different things but depending on the manufacturer they can be the same price. Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price is just a guideline for you to sell the item at and the Manufacturers' Advertised Price is the lowest price that you can advertise it. Manufacturers legally are not allowed to tell you what you can sell the items at. However they can determine who they sell their products to. This gives them the right to take away the line from any retailer for no reason (the reason being below MAP pricing). The last big case I heard was won by the Manufacturer at the Supreme Court.

At our company we have come up with a way to get the manufacturers attention when another website is below MAP pricing. We simply call them and ask them "what promotion we missed. The website below MAP must be receiving a special promotion that we didn't get since you are letting them sell below MAP." Depending on the manufacturer and their response, we tell them we will have to match their prices until they fix the issue. Being one of the larger retailers in our industry we throw our weight around a bit. We do get threats to have lines taken away though. This problem is not going away and is only getting worse with the economy.

We did just start a new internal marketing campaign that allows us to discount products based on the location of the customer's IP. This may come in handy to take out Manufacturers areas for certain sales but I will let you know how this goes.

yeah I use google base a lot for that. Bottom line for us is will the manufacturer take action and when.

here we go again. Same competitor, same manufacturers. We've had MAP policies from 3 different manufacturers since 2007. Everyone complied. Last month, everyone complied. This month, i go to one of our biggest competitor's website... they are not in compliance for all three manufactuers: ~500 products.

just shot one off... lets see how long it takes...

The question I have run into -- and there is only one manufacturer that I have dealt with (don't right now) that has MAP Pricing -- is that I wouldn't buy directly from the manufacturer, but from a distributor. The distributor is saying that they can't sell to stores unless they adhere to the MAP pricing. It seems to me that the manufacturer can decide whether to sell to the distributor or not, but shouldn't be able to dictate what the distributor does with each store.