MAP Policy Best Practices: Issue a Policy, Do Not Sign an Agreement

A MAP policy in the United States is normally something you issue to your resellers, not something you and a reseller agree to. That distinction is the most load-bearing thing on this page. An agreement on price and a policy you issue alone are treated differently. Your counsel will care a great deal which one you have built.

Policy, and not agreement

A manufacturer’s own decision about whom it will keep 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 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. We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice.

What follows from it in daily practice:

• You issue the policy. You do not ask resellers to countersign it.
• You do not negotiate the MAP figure with an individual reseller.
• You do not carry messages about pricing between resellers.
• You apply the same figure and the same consequences to every one of them.

Your counsel will have their own list. Theirs wins.

MAP and MSRP are different things

MSRP is a suggestion about what a customer pays. MAP is a floor under what a reseller may advertise, and it leaves the selling price alone. A reseller can sell below MAP. What they cannot do is advertise below it. Blurring the two inside your own policy document is how a policy ends up describing something your counsel did not intend.

One version, dated, covering every product

Reissue it when the price list moves, and record which reseller was sent which version and when. Enforcement against a version the seller never received is the weakest argument you can bring, and it is the first thing a reseller reaches for.

Measure the compliance rate

Report the share of listings found that sit at or above policy, across everything checked. A count of violations measures how hard you looked. A compliance rate measured against full catalogue coverage tells you whether the policy is holding. It is the only number worth putting in front of a board.

Acknowledge the sellers who comply

The compliant part of your channel is doing what you asked, often at a cost to its own advertised position. A programme that only ever sends warnings teaches the channel that contact from you is bad news. The good sellers are the ones a competitor can take. What the service does.