MAP Policy Mastery: Strengthening Retailer-Brand Relationships

The dealer most likely to leave your MAP programme is the one who held price, reported the seller who did not, and heard nothing back. They have now paid for the policy twice, in margin and in the favour of reporting, and received no sign that either mattered. Closing that loop is cheap and almost nobody does it.

Enforcement is usually discussed as something done to sellers. The half that decides whether your dealer network stays intact is what you tell the sellers who are already complying.

What to say when the policy goes out

Send the policy with the reason attached. A dealer reads a price floor as a constraint until somebody explains what it protects. What it protects is their own margin against a competitor advertising the same part for less.

Say what you will monitor, how often, and what the first notice looks like. Surprises make a policy feel arbitrary. Tell dealers a notice arrives by email, names the listing and asks for a correction within a stated window. A dealer who knows that will treat the first one as admin. A dealer who gets a legal-sounding letter out of nowhere treats it as a threat and calls their rep.

Name the person who handles disputes. Notices that arrive from a monitoring address with no human behind them get ignored, then resented.

What to say to the dealer who reported it

Reply the same week, even when the answer is that you are still working on it. Put three things in writing: that you received the report, what stage the seller is at, and when they should expect the next update.

Where the seller turns out to be outside your network entirely, say that too. A dealer who learns the undercut came from a liquidation channel, and not from a fellow dealer, understands the problem differently. They stop assuming the policy is being applied to them alone.

Publish who is compliant

Your compliant sellers are a list worth keeping current and worth showing. Customers use it to find a real dealer. Dealers use it as proof that being on it is worth something. And a seller who has been removed from it notices faster than they notice a notice.

Keep the list accurate even where it is unflattering. A dealer who is still on the authorised list a month after you cut their supply tells every other dealer what the list is worth.

Give the network something back for the cost

Compliance costs a dealer margin in the short run. Something has to sit on the other side of it, and it does not have to be money. Early access to new stock, co-op advertising support, fitment and technical help, a faster warranty route, referral of end customers from your own site.

Handle the awkward question honestly

Sooner or later a dealer asks why a larger account appears to be getting away with it. The only answer that survives is a true one. If you are not willing to cut supply to your biggest account, the policy describes a threshold and not a floor. The dealers who complied are the ones paying for it. Decide that before you launch, and set the policy where you can hold it.

On how a run programme handles identification and escalation, see MAP monitoring and enforcement.