// MAP monitoring
MAP and MRP Together: Who Sets Which Number
MAP sets the lowest price a reseller may advertise. MRP, minimum resale price, sets the lowest price it may actually sell at. They are different instruments carrying different legal weight, and the second one goes to counsel before it goes anywhere else.
What each one controls
A MAP policy reaches the advertisement. The reseller can still discount at the counter, in an email to a customer, or behind a login. That limit is the point of the instrument, and it is why MAP is the lighter of the two.
An MRP policy reaches the transaction. It tells the reseller what it may sell for. Since Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSKS, 551 U.S. 877 (2007), US courts have judged such price maintenance under the rule of reason. That is a different and more demanding question than the one a MAP policy raises. Several states are stricter. We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. Take the distinction to counsel before either document is drafted.
How resellers discount without breaking MAP
A reseller that wants to cut price and stay inside a MAP policy has a set of moves that work. Hiding the price until the item is in the cart. A store wide promotion that never names your product. Call for pricing. A bundle where the discount sits on the other item. A price shown only to logged in customers or sent by email.
Whether any of those counts as a violation depends entirely on how your policy defines advertising. A document that says “advertised price” and stops there has permitted most of that list. That is a drafting decision, and it has to be made before the first notice goes out.
Incentives do the work that penalties cannot
A dealer weighing a discount is comparing what the discount earns against what breaking policy costs. Where the second number is a letter, the first one wins.
Things that change the second number: co-op advertising money, territory, wholesale terms, early allocation on a new release, first call on constrained stock. A dealer with something to lose is easier to keep compliant than one with only a warning to fear.
The penalty side still has to be written down and carried out in order. Warning, cancelled pending orders, restricted future orders, suspended account. State plainly in the policy that you decide what a violation is, or the argument starts there every time.
The unauthorised seller is a supply question
Neither MAP nor MRP binds a seller that never agreed to anything and does not buy from you. Policy documents have no reach there, and a marketplace taking a cut of the sale has little reason to help.
What has reach is the route. A test purchase read for its return address, packing slip and any serialisation tells you which distributor the stock came from. Close that and the listing stops being restocked. Send notices instead and the same operator reappears under a new storefront name.