MAP Direction

Not What You Think
About this entry. It is not what you're thinking. We are not talking about the traditional map like the one shown here with which you find a location or from which you get a direction.  Rather, this is a web issue that affects all e-commerce participants viz., product manufacturers, product distributors, product dealers (aka retailers), and shoppers (the product end users).  This common issue of interest is the Minimum Advertised Price (MAP).  It came up as a discussion topic last week.  Very interesting and productive discussion, from which I got among other things, this topic idea. The previous post was a necessarily long troubleshootng report; this time, this post will be a short one, much shorter than the last one.  Because it is an ongoing issue, I would welcome your opinion and insights on this topic.  You will get full credit for your comments and opinions ie., if you have a link, you can be sure it is (it will be) a "do-follow" link.

Quick Definitions
Here is a quick definitions set of the terms that may be used in this post
MAP       -Minimum Advertised Price
MSRP     -Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (also sometimes denoted as List Price)
MRP       -Minimum Retail Price

MAP is supposed to Level the Playing Field
Ideally, MAP should level the playing field for sellers.  If retailers R1, R2, R3, ..., Rn sell the product for the same price $P then one important way to compete and perhaps the difference that makes the difference for the customer's buy decision is customer service and comparatively better user-experience of the winning store.  A situation like this would definitely be great for customer service as the price factor (retailers trying to outdo each other undercutting prices) would no longer be an issue.

The Problem with MAP

However, the reality is that the MAP policy is not consistently and uniformly enforced by manufacturers. Reasons we've heard for this include the fact that the manufacturer doesn't have enough personnel to monitor and enforce the policy, or that the manufacturer's big accounts oppose the price level.  Whatever the reasons, the policy is certainly not consistently enforced for now.  If manufacturers are not going to do away with MAP policy, we at least hope they would improve their efforts to applying it unformly as  time progresses.  What are your thoughts? Any uniform enforcement ideas for the manufacturers?

Another problem is inconsistent interpretation.  According to information available on the internet, some manufacturers say the MAP is just the list price or MSRP and that the final sale price may be different from the display price. Others insist that the MAP is (and should be) Minimum Retail Price (MRP), ie., the final price cannot be less than the MAP value and bundling or any other promo incentive is not even allowed as part of the sale.