MAP Monitoring: Everything You Need To Know About – Netnut

MAP Monitoring – How to Improve Your Business Brand With Proxies

Prices are a defining factor for the competition that goes on in both the offline and e-commerce business world. What this illustrates is that many internet-based businesses have constantly attempted to increase or reduce their selling prices just to get a better sales margin as compared to their contenders. While we see the ongoing competition between online brands focusing on attracting more customers for better sales, there is a background effort made by these brands to cross-check prices set by their retailers across the online space to spot fluxes in the market.

This gives rise to the concept of map monitoring. But what is map monitoring and how does it connect retailers to manufacturers? In the course of this article, we will be discussing all of what map monitoring entails, how useful it is in assisting manufacturers or online brands to maintain their reputation in the online world and many more. Sit tight and let us get right on to the business of the day!

What is MAP?

Before we dive into the concept of map monitoring, it would make more sense to establish an idea of what a map is, especially for those who are not well acquainted with it.

MAP is an acronym for Minimum Advertised Price and it refers to the minimum price that a seller is allowed to sell an item or the lowest concluded price that a seller is willing to sell an item. Manufacturers often set up a legal map policy for retailers to help retain the company’s stance and keep them stable in the long run. For a better understanding of what a map is, let us make an example. If a headset brand tags a map of $150 for each headset, it implies that the least amount that internet-based retailers are expected to advertise or sell this item is $150. The retailers can, therefore, sell one headset for $150 or more. The essence of map policy is to help maintain a standard price range across diverse outlets in the online space.

What is Map Monitoring?

When a seller or a retailer sells below the agreed map, he or she is said to be violating the map agreement. But then again, all these violations are bound to happen in a space with diverse retailers. While some may disobey impulsively, others may be left with no other option but to reduce the price further to attract sales in the competitive space. 

Map monitoring is what helps brands to stay informed about these changes as it involves the action of monitoring internet-based goods prices to determine the instability in the market. Brands employ map monitoring measures to confirm that retailers abide by the set minimum retailer’s trade rate for certain products. 

How Does Map Monitoring Operate?

Map monitoring can function in two distinct ways, that is, manually or automated. Specific brands may choose to go through the manual route, regardless, the automated pattern has some major advantages. Let us discuss them in detail. 

Handling MAP Monitoring Process Manually

To check minimum advertised price adherence manually, brands may have to complete certain processes according to different set policies. Let us take a look!

• Checking out all retailers to identify set prices. These manufacturers will have to take the first step to figure out all the retail sellers and single out the minimum prices at which these sellers have agreed to place their items for sale.
• Communicating with defaulters. Of course, as earlier established, not all retailers will abide by the agreed minimum rate to sell a particular product. This decision could be spontaneous or a result of pressure from customers and competitors. At this stage, brands will identify those who disobey the set map policy and contact them.
• Analyzing retailers’ response. Right after these brands have communicated with the map violators, they go back to review the response of the seller, that is, if the reseller has modified the prices or not. 
• Identifying adamant retailers. The manufacturers also take the step to re-evaluate the prices displayed by all retailers to figure out the ones that are yet to comply with the warnings given to them. Thereafter, they issue a last warning to these violators. 

While this manual process may work great with brands that have a relatively small number of sellers to monitor, the process may still be comparably time and energy-consuming. The outlined steps will continue like a cycle, with manufacturers repeatedly attempting to identify retailers and their maps to spot offenders.

Handling Map Monitoring Automatically

Brands that opt for this map monitoring method often utilize specifically designed price software or information extraction measures. This helps them with an automated means to extract and assemble e-commerce price information and transmit it to the source that requests it. 

Here is some of the information that automated software can deliver to manufacturers utilizing them:

• A comprehensive list containing all of the retailers that purchase and sell the brand’s products.
• The diverse prices at which these items are being displayed for sale on the online space.
• Also, the map monitoring software can perform the function of identifying all of the displayed prices that are not in line with the minimum advertised price agreement. 

Automatic map monitoring tools perform a more efficient function in setting up a durable monitoring solution for your brand. Even at a time when a company can review diverse retail prices in different markets manually, the automated system will allow for more accuracy while helping to conserve time. But then, why do brands require map monitoring in the first place? Let us find out. 

Why Do Internet-Based Brands Require Map Monitoring?

The importance of e-commerce map monitoring can not be overstated or misunderstood as everyone approves of it. Nonetheless, many have failed to see that the price structure of diverse items goes beyond accruing profits for the brand. The price structure of a business forms the bedrock of advertisement and reputation. It can significantly impact a company’s value and as soon as there is an inconsistent pricing pattern across various places of the e-commerce space, consumers may begin to conceive a negative idea about the company.

Imagine a setting where a company already outlined its minimum price for its online customers to see and take note of. These customers do not instantly forget the exact pricing that they may have already seen and may be quick to compare these prices to others displayed by other retailers. As soon as they notice a difference in these displayed prices, they do not attempt to hold the retailers responsible for the discrepancies. All blame and negative perceptions are targeted towards the company and this usually sticks longer in their minds than you may think. 

Also, when a seller decides to set a lower price as compared to the agreed minimum price, there is the possibility that others might attempt such action as well to keep up with the competition, leading to a chain of hazardous effects. After the commitment invested towards creating a valuable company, you would not want to entertain threats from less attention being paid to monitoring your company’s map on resellers’ space. It may be almost impossible to regain your company’s reputation once lost. 

With these points, comes the necessary justifications for e-commerce brands to employ map monitoring measures for their brand. 

Possible Reasons Why Sellers Violate Minimum Advertised Price Policy

With other factors held constant, sellers are expected to abide by the agreements of MAP. Nonetheless, with a wide range of competition in the internet marketplace, there is always a different story. Two major factors push sellers into violating the already agreed-upon minimum advertiser price and these are competition pressure and a crack in the supply network. Let us discuss these factors further.

• Competition Pressure. Manufacturers depend on multiple retailers to purchase their goods and services, implying that many available retailers are selling a particular brand product in the e-commerce marketplace. In such a situation, all retailers struggle amongst themselves to remain relevant in the market causing them to make decisions that bring about tight competition. Some of these retailers may be compelled to attach lower prices to their goods, violating the already fixed minimum advertised price recommended by their suppliers. 
• Leak or Crack in Supply Network. What this simply implies is that the presence of unauthorized retailers can cause a violation of the minimum advertised price. When specific resellers obtain certain purchases from a brand without proper notice, they tend to fix their prices independently of any suggestion from the brands. Such action may pose a threat to other authorized retailers as they may perceive the competitive gap between themselves and the other resellers, causing them to lower their prices. 

Regardless of the factors that compel retailers to violate the agreed minimum advertised price, all impact is mostly felt by the manufacturers. This is so because whenever resellers advertise their goods for sale at a rate lower than the brand’s MAP, customers are most likely to talk badly about the brand, rather than the resellers. The inconsistency in selling price may cause consumers to trust the brand less and as such harm its reputation in the long run. At the end of the day, rebuilding a brand’s reputation will certainly demand more work than monitoring MAP compliance.

Possible Results Attached to Setting Up Map Monitoring Activities

It is worth noting that MAP monitoring policies are an ideal avenue for brands to shield themselves from price discrimination. This makes it important to set up a solid strategy that can effectively handle MAP monitoring across diverse e-commerce stations where your retailers operate. Here are some anticipated results for setting up MAP monitoring measures: 

• Helping to create reasonable competition in the e-commerce space. Often, retailers tend to lower prices below the MAP agreed upon by their suppliers for many reasons. One of these many reasons is the attempt to meet up with the tight competition in the market. However, when manufacturers prioritize the action of monitoring all of these prices across the various e-commerce platforms, they can cause these retailers to comply with agreements. Complying with the MAP agreement, therefore, means that all retailers will settle for prices within a particular range and allow for fairness in competition rather than trade under pressure.
• Creating a trustworthy brand reputation. Whatever retailers decide to do with your brand rarely gets to affect them but your brand name. This makes it crucial to get involved in retailers that purchase your items. One way to get involved is by taking action to monitor their compliance with the authorized MAP. Once such an action is set up, you are bound to expect that you can control how your brand’s product price is set up for the public to reduce the chances of inconsistencies.
• Maintaining a harmonious relationship with resellers. The importance of maintaining client-customer relationships cannot be overstated and this applies to brands and their retailers. Constant monitoring of retailer’s compliance with set MAP will create an avenue to occasionally communicate with these small businesses, especially during the times that their prices are flagged to be violating policies. 
• Assisting small business setup to healthily compete. Many medium-scale businesses are more fit to lower sales prices to attract customers compared to small-scale businesses. In an ideal world, most medium-scale businesses would choose to do that, giving small businesses zero chances of trying to compete or measure up to them. Nonetheless, with the MAP monitoring routine, these businesses are expected to have a reasonable margin at which they can both healthily compete with each other. 

Pitfalls of Implementing  MAP Monitoring 

The idea of MAP monitoring screams diverse benefits, nonetheless, implementing these policies may not exactly be an easy ride. Here are some of the challenges that you may encounter during this process:

• One of the major challenges that you may encounter in minimum advertised price policy monitoring is attempting to handle a significant number of resellers efficiently. This may not exactly be an issue for small brands that have less number of retailers that they supply their product to. Regardless, the essence of setting up a business is making profits and doing so with the growth of the business in mind. With such growth, brands that often thrive on and off the web may need to spread their monitoring tentacles across these areas to effectively handle the monitoring process. This may be time-consuming and may also require a lot of resources.
• Another setback encountered is spotting and handling these violations immediately. Handling the monitoring process effectively and swiftly means that brands must employ a powerful monitoring tool to identify these breaches and implement response strategies to put them in check. An inability to do this may cause an issue for the supplier.
• Enforcing these minimum price policies and setting up tough measures to see that they are obeyed may pave the way for a strain in the reseller’s relationship with suppliers. In a case where resellers perceive the supplier to be too rigid with implementing policies, they may get discouraged from sticking to the brand. Such discouragement may lead to retailers diverting to purchasing items elsewhere, possibly from competing brands. This will, in turn, result in a reduction in the revenue of the brand.

Factors to Consider While Enforcing A MAP Agreement

Enforcing an effective MAP agreement may appear tough, yet, with proper strategies, brands can get through with their expected pricing objectives with next to no issues encountered, especially with their resellers. Let us review these factors.

• Be transparent with expectations from the start. Every manufacturer that aims to adopt the MAP adherence agreement must establish it from the start. As a manufacturer, you may need to highlight all of the expectations and agreement clauses to your retailers for better understanding. This will keep these resellers informed from the start to avert any form of misunderstanding when the MAP violation is spotted.
• Be consistent with implementation. The only way retailers will effortlessly hold on to the importance of MAP policies is when they are reflected in the actions of the manufacturer. This makes it important that a brand must prioritize monitoring retailers to attend to cases of violation promptly.
• Consider adopting technology. While there exist manual means to monitor and identify MAP agreement violations, a manufacturer must consider the automated option. This is because technology has made it all quite easier and less time-consuming. So adopting monitoring software will mean getting a simplified way to monitor your retailer’s set prices. Also, an easier means would help to push for consistency and efficiency in the entire monitoring process. 
• Consider offering incentives. There is no limit to the motivation that comes with getting a reward for getting anything done properly. As a manufacturer planning to set up MAP monitoring measures, you must attempt the strategy of offering incentives to retailers that are consistent with obeying MAP rules. This will help to improve the relationship that exists between manufacturers and resellers. Above all, it will help to motivate those who fail to comply with set price rules as they may want to partake in these incentives.
• Create a flexible atmosphere for communication. This is one ideal way to maintain a good working relationship between suppliers and resellers. With regular communication, retailers will find it easier to express their concerns that may hinder them from complying with set policies. On the other hand, manufacturers will take advantage of this effective communication to understand resellers and assist them in diverse ways to help them push through with compliance actions.

Alternative Technologies Employed For MAP Monitoring

Enforcing MAP agreements manually does not prove so effective and this has led to the recommendation that many brands choose the automated option. There is available software developed to help monitor these minimum advertised price agreement compliance. However, other software innovations can help to get this task done. Let us review some of them.

Data Scraping. This refers to the act of pulling diverse information or data from the online space. Brands can utilize this innovation to effectively keep track of the price data of different resellers to identify breaches. This can help you conserve time as compared to the manual monitoring option.

Artificial Intelligence. This amazing innovation is already dominating the online space and it can assist in reviewing significant amounts of information to identify errors. Brands can utilize this tool to effectively detect breaches in displayed pricing and many more.

Channel Monitoring Software. This software can aid brands in automatically monitoring certain brand items available in different internet-based channels. This will assist in spotting minimum advertised price policy breaches. 

Conclusion

There you have it, a detailed article revealing all of which map monitoring entails. Currently, it may appear tough for brands to always check the pricing of their product sold to retailers. Map monitoring is beneficial to solving such challenges for brands, allowing companies to fix minimum rates for their supplied goods and manage these fixed policies. 

Notwithstanding the pitfalls of adopting this monitoring strategy, there are diverse alternatives to choose from to ensure that an effective map monitoring routine is completed. 

By enforcing some of these policies with available technology, brands are bound to retain their reputation and attain their pricing objective while maintaining healthy relationships and communication with their resellers.

Frequently Asked Questions and Answers

How do you get the most suitable minimum advertised price policy monitoring tool?

There are diverse monitoring tools offered on various websites. Paying attention to doing your research will help you decide the most suited monitoring tool. Also, some of these alternative technologies are freely offered to be utilized across the web. 

Why is MAP so necessary for manufacturers?

The importance of adopting this monitoring measure can not be overemphasized as it is the most assured way for manufacturers to confirm that their pricing policy is being adhered to. Map monitoring saves the extra stress of battling reputation issues that arise from minimum pricing inconsistencies among different retailers. 

What are the consequences of breaching MAP Policies?

The response to the violation of pricing agreements is mainly a decision that has to be made by the supplier, probably with the guidance of a lawyer who can help to review that they are in line with national laws.