It is no secret that many brands took advantage of eCommerce. They can reach millions of customers worldwide, and in just a few days, the customer receives the product they ordered. But selling online also allowed unknown online stores to resell products. These unauthorized online stores attract more customers because they undersell products, hurting the brands’ profits.   

To prevent that, some brands decided to implement minimum advertised pricing policies (MAP). MAP is the minimum price a retailer can offer and sell your products to customers. The online retailer must sell it at the established price, even more, but never less than value. MAP helps brands have unified prices across all platforms and increase brand value. 

So, how can you create a MAP policy for your business? We are telling you how, but do not make the common mistake of searching online for a template and copying it. It will not work because it must have your input! With that clear, these are the questions and points your MAP policy must answer when creating it. 

1- Define your objective 

The first thing you have to do is to ask yourself and your pricing team why you want to enforce the MAP policy. Describe and analyze the reasons why your company has to implement this policy. Make sure you have analytics to back up your motives to enforce a MAP policy. These can be paragraphs or bullet points.      

2- What do you consider a breach? 

Here, you can go many ways. In this section, you describe what you consider a MAP infringement for your products and business. Many factors play a role here. Depending on your prices, determine what an infraction is. Take a look closely at your products' prices to know for sure what you consider a breach.  

3- Consequences 

After you decide what a MAP violation is for your products, it is time to know the consequences of infringing the MAP agreement. Most companies use the three-strike method. If a seller commits one strike, you issue them a warning and tell them to change the price. If they do it for the second time, suspend them for a specific time. If they continue to do it, terminate the partnership. If you want to be stricter, use a two-strike or even a one-strike approach. It is up to you to decide those steps.  

4- Products Involved   

Not all of your items need to be protected by a MAP policy. You have to find out which are your most essential products and then proceed to establish the MAP policy. How can you know which are your most important products? You can check it in your sale book, which takes too long to find. A manual search is a waste of your time. With PriceTweakers, you can detect which are these products with the faster and easier Product Performance Page and make pricing decisions. The software has more functions, such as price monitoring and dynamic pricing.     

Conclusion 

To create a MAP policy, you need to answer the questions above. Remember that the MAP policy protects your products from sellers underselling them and hurting your brand and profits. PriceTweakers has the best MAP solution for your company because you can track your products worldwide. Also, with our MAP action management tab, you have control over your MAP. You can see which vendor committed a breach and for how many days. The best feature is that you contact them directly to solve the issue.    

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