What is MAP Monitoring?
MAP monitoring, short for Minimum Advertised Price monitoring, involves manufacturers and brands closely tracking the prices set by retailers and resellers. This ensures adherence to their Minimum Advertised Pricing (MAP) policy, which establishes the lowest price sellers are allowed to publicly display. Manufacturers and brands must consistently monitor individual retailer stores, marketplaces, and price comparison sites. When a price falls below the authorized threshold, brands must engage with the reseller to enforce the MAP policy.
This monitoring process holds significant importance for several reasons:
-Brand Identity Protection: It shields your brand identity from price erosion.
-Profit Margin Preservation: It safeguards your profit margins.
-Trust Building: It fosters trust between you and your retail partners.
The continuous and proactive nature of MAP monitoring is crucial. Neglecting to stay updated on your resellers can render your pricing policy ineffective when ignored by others.
In this post, we will delve into what MAP monitoring entails, how it operates, and how brands can initiate the process of monitoring retailer pricing.
MAP Monitoring: How Does it Work?
Real-time Monitoring: Effective retail partners adhere to your pricing policies because they understand the value of a strong relationship. However, not all sellers are reliable partners. Some may test the waters by attempting to undercut your pricing. They might employ software to make quick pricing adjustments, often slipping temporary discounts unnoticed.
This is why MAP monitoring cannot be a sporadic check of the reseller landscape or a one-time project. It must be continuous. Resellers frequently adjust their prices, necessitating constant vigilance.
Monitoring in Real-time: Monitoring prices in real-time allows brands to detect price changes immediately, preventing damage to your brand and profit margins from price erosion.
Reseller Stores, Marketplaces, and Price Comparison Sites: MAP monitoring requires tracking the prices across all web pages where your products are featured, including individual retailer websites, marketplaces, and price comparison sites.
The Importance of Widespread Monitoring: Monitoring the majority of your resellers increases the likelihood of detecting price violations when they first occur. Failing to do so may result in other sellers ignoring your MAP policy, initiating a domino effect of price reductions, ultimately harming everyone’s profits.
Continuous Monitoring: To prevent price wars and maintain your pricing policy’s integrity, your monitoring must be continuous and in real-time. You should aim to monitor as many resellers as possible, as any gaps in your tracking can enable rogue sellers to undermine your pricing policy.
Instead of relying on periodic checks, many brands employ monitoring software tools to automatically track resellers online. These tools automate the process of checking prices and provide real-time alerts about changes.
MAP monitoring is challenging when done manually. Even with only a few products and sellers to monitor, manual tracking is impractical, as violations can easily go unnoticed. To detect the origin of pricing disruptions and maintain control over your resellers, automation is essential.
How to Monitor Retailer Pricing:
-To get started with a MAP monitoring tool that alerts you to price changes among your resellers, follow these steps:
-Search Your Page: Copy and paste the product URL you want to monitor into the search field on the monitoring tool’s homepage.
-Select the Part to Monitor: Identify the specific part of the page you want to monitor, typically the section surrounding the price.
-Set the Monitoring Frequency: Specify how frequently you want the page checked, whether every 5 minutes, 30 minutes, hourly, or daily.
-Enter Your Email Address: Provide the email address where you want to receive alerts.
-Start Monitoring: Click the “Start Monitoring” button, and you’re all set to receive deal notifications.
-Complete Your Account: Check your email for a message from the monitoring tool, where you’ll be asked to create a password for your account. Completing this step grants access to your user dashboard, where you can view all your monitors and alerts in one place.
Automated MAP monitoring tools, like the one mentioned earlier, are designed to streamline the process and make it more manageable.
Level up Your MAP Monitoring Capabilities:
MAP monitoring is essential for your long-term success as an e-commerce brand. By protecting your prices, you not only benefit yourself but also serve your customers and your sellers.
The user dashboard provided by these tools simplifies viewing price change alerts in one location and helps detect patterns and associations over time.
In Conclusion
Effective MAP monitoring is critical for brand protection, profit preservation, and maintaining trust with retail partners. Automation through specialized tools ensures the continuous, real-time tracking necessary to uphold your pricing policies effectively.