Understanding Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) and Crafting a Competitive Policy

MAP is the lowest price a reseller may advertise your product at. MSRP is the selling price a manufacturer suggests. Resale price maintenance is an agreement about the price a reseller actually charges. The three get used interchangeably, and the difference decides what you are able to enforce.

The three terms, kept apart

MAP. Set a MAP of $500 and a reseller advertises at $500 or above. They may still sell for less, through a checkout discount, a coupon, or a conversation. None of that is a breach.

MSRP. A recommendation about the selling price. Nothing hangs on it.

Resale price maintenance. An agreement fixing the price a reseller sells at. This is the one carrying antitrust exposure, and a MAP policy is drafted to stay clear of it.

What counts as advertised

Advertised is the price a shopper is shown before the cart. The listing price, the price in a search ad, the price on a comparison engine, the price in a printed flyer.

Online the edge blurs, which is why the add to cart gate exists. The listing shows the MAP figure and the lower price appears in the cart. Whether your policy allows that is a decision to make in the document, because a seller will read silence as permission.

Setting the number

We do not set MAP figures and we would be guessing if we did. The inputs are your wholesale price, and the margin a stocking dealer needs to justify holding inventory. Then what the part is worth against the alternatives a buyer has. A figure so high that no reseller can work with it produces a policy nobody follows and a compliance rate that embarrasses everyone.

Scope is the part that gets skipped

Write down which surfaces the policy covers. Online listings. Marketplaces. Comparison engines. Paid search ads. Printed advertising. In-store signage. Each one is either covered or it is not. A policy that says “advertising” without listing them will be read narrowly by whoever wants to.

The legal frame, briefly

We are not lawyers and nothing here is legal advice. In the US, a manufacturer’s unilateral decision about whom it keeps 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 itself has been judged under the rule of reason since Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSKS, 551 U.S. 877 (2007). Several US states are stricter than federal law, and other countries handle it differently again. Have counsel draft the policy for the markets you sell in.

Two checks before you publish it

Does every clause distinguish the advertised price from the selling price. Can you say, for each seller, when they received this version. If the second answer is no, the first one will not save you.

MAP monitoring and enforcement is the service side of this.