MAP Policies and Sales: What to Measure Before You Enforce

Before a MAP programme starts, somebody in the room says enforcement will cost the company sales. Nobody in that room can answer them, because the number that would settle it was never written down. Measure the compliance rate across your catalogue before the first notice goes out, and the argument becomes a fact six months later.

Baseline first, notices second

A compliance rate is the share of listings found that sit at or above your advertised floor. It needs the compliant listings in the denominator, which means checking all of them, including the ones that turn out to be fine.

Run that for a few weeks with nothing else happening. No notices, no calls, no letters. What you get is a starting figure and a list of who is under policy. Both are worthless if you enforce on day one and only look at the number afterwards.

Without the baseline, every later claim about the programme is somebody’s opinion against somebody else’s. A quiet quarter looks exactly like a working programme.

What changes for a dealer who was already compliant

Nothing, except that the seller undercutting them stops. That is the whole argument for the dealers you want to keep, and it is worth putting in writing to them at the start. A dealer who holds your price while three storefronts advertise under it is losing the sale and taking the margin hit for staying honest.

Give them the compliant seller list and the fact that you are running the programme. Silence reads as inaction.

What changes for the one who was not

Some sellers raise the advertised price and carry on buying. Some go quiet and reappear under another storefront name. Some are not buying from your network at all and will ignore you until the supply route is cut.

The revenue question sits with the third group. Say a large share of the volume under policy comes from stock you did not sell into. Cutting it costs less than the spreadsheet suggests. It was never your margin.

Test the distribution argument

The claim that pricing control opens better distribution is easy to test and hard to argue about in the abstract. Ask the two distributors you want most whether a written, enforced policy changes their answer. That question has a direct reply, and it is more use than any general statement about what the trade wants.

Four numbers worth reporting

Compliance rate against every listing found. Violations resolved. Sellers identified down to a legal entity. Days from first notice to resolution.

A count of violations found is not on that list. It measures how hard somebody looked.

The service page sets out how we run this, including what we will not do.