When a MAP policy is the wrong tool

A MAP policy is the wrong tool for you if price is the reason people buy your product. Making your resellers advertise higher takes away the argument they were winning on, and some of the volume goes with it. Decide that before you write anything, because a policy is cheap to announce and expensive to abandon.

The harder question comes next.

Would you stop shipping to a customer who pays on time

Enforcement ends at supply. The notice, the phone call and the letter all work because the last step is real. If your largest dealer advertises below policy and keeps getting shipped, every other dealer has priced your policy at zero. You then spend the next year sending notices that get read as paperwork.

So the test is the dealer you cannot afford to lose. Are you willing to stop supplying that one? If the answer is no, what you have is a price list with a wish attached.

There is a fair question underneath it. Is a dealer who undercuts the market you are holding for everyone else a good customer at all? Their order volume is real. So is the cost they are putting on the dealers who follow the policy.

What a MAP policy will not do on its own

It will not raise what your brand is worth. The advertised price is one input into how a product is perceived. It sits alongside what the product does, what your marketing says, and what a dealer tells a customer at the counter. A policy holds a floor. It does not build the thing standing on it.

An unfamiliar seller needs investigation. Check the stock source, policy delivery and any relevant account terms. Authorisation status alone does not identify the cause or decide the available response. Have counsel review the evidence before a supply action.

When it is the right tool

The case is strongest where your dealers do work that costs money. Holding stock, fitting parts, answering fitment questions, taking returns. Those dealers lose to a seller with no overhead the moment the advertised price is the only comparison a customer makes. The floor is what pays for the difference.

If you go ahead, three things come first. Write the policy. Distribute it so you can prove who received it. Measure where you are starting from, before the first notice. Then back the dealers who follow it.

Correction, 23 September 2026: unauthorised status alone does not establish the stock source, policy reach or available response.