// MAP monitoring
Exploring E-Commerce MAP Policy Guidelines
Before an online MAP programme goes out, the thing to get straight is the difference between a policy you announce and an agreement you negotiate. We are not lawyers and none of this is legal advice. It is the shape of the question your counsel will ask about first.
Advertised price and selling price are different questions
A MAP policy governs how low a product may be advertised. The reseller stays free to sell at whatever price it likes once a customer is in front of it. That separation is what keeps MAP distinct from resale price maintenance. A policy that quietly tries to control the checkout price is a different instrument, with a different legal history.
A unilateral policy is not the same as an agreement
In the US, a manufacturer’s unilateral decision about whom it keeps supplying has been treated differently from an agreement on price. That treatment dates from United States v. Colgate and Co., 250 U.S. 300 (1919). Resale price maintenance itself has been judged under the rule of reason since Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSKS, 551 U.S. 877 (2007). Several states are stricter than federal law, and the analysis outside the United States is its own subject. Your counsel decides what applies to you.
What follows from that distinction is practical. A policy that is announced, distributed and applied the same way to everyone is one thing. A negotiation with a dealer about what it will charge is another. The second conversation is the one to stay out of. It is easy to drift into by accident, during a phone call with an angry dealer.
Distribute it, and be able to prove you did
A policy the seller never received is the weakest thing you can bring to an argument. Keep the record: which version, the date it was sent, the address it went to, and the acknowledgement if you asked for one. The same applies to every price change afterwards.
Say it the same way every time
Templates your counsel has approved, wording taken from your own policy, and the same sequence for every seller.
A notice that improvises a threat is a liability. So is a notice that dresses a pricing violation up as an intellectual property infringement claim. A price below policy on a genuine part is not infringement. Filing it as one works once, then it costs you standing on the platform.
The platform features your policy has to have a position on
Anywhere the platform changes the advertised figure without the seller touching the listing. A coupon applied in the basket. A marketplace wide promotion. A strikethrough comparison price. A page that hides the price until the item is in the cart.
Decide what each of those means under your policy before a dealer asks. The answer invented during the argument is the one that gets quoted back at you.