What Counts as an Advertised Price, and Where It Stops

A price is advertised when a retailer has spread it widely. A price tag on a shelf usually is not, because its job is to tell the person standing there what the part costs. A flyer, a store announcement and an online ad usually are. The hard cases are markdowns and the shopping cart, and there is no clean answer for either.

This area of law is thin and the fact patterns are specific. Take the walk-through below as a way of thinking about your own catalogue. Take the decision to an attorney. We are not lawyers.

A definition worth working from

New York City’s item-pricing law defines “advertised price” in section 20-708.1 of its Administrative Code. The definition reads “the price of a stock keeping unit [SKU] which a retail store has caused to be disseminated by means of promotional methods”. Its examples are “an in-store sign, or newspaper, circular, television or radio advertising.”

Treat that as a working definition, not a rule that binds your resellers. What binds them is your own policy wording. The useful word in it is “disseminated”, which means spread widely. If a retailer has pushed a price out to as many people as it can reach, the price is advertised. If the price is sitting where one shopper can read it, it probably is not.

The cases, one at a time

In-store flyer. Printed in volume and handed out to reach as many people as possible. That is a print advertisement, and the prices in it are advertised prices.

Storewide markdown. If the reduction shows only on individual shelf tags and nothing announces it, there is no dissemination and no advertisement. That situation is rare. Once there is signage in the window, at the door, or repeated down the aisles, the price is being spread and the policy applies.

Markdown on one rack or in one department. Case by case, on the same test. Widespread signage promoting the reduction means the store intends to reach as many people as it can. A single card on a single rack, with no flyer and no other signage, reads as the selling price.

PA announcements. Broadcast to the whole store, often on a loop. That combines a radio spot with an in-store sign, and the intent to reach everyone present is hard to argue with. Prices in them are advertised.

Price tags and shelf labels. The retailer is fine here. A price on a hang tag or a shelf edge is the selling price, shown so a shopper knows what the part costs. It is informative, and it is not being spread.

The online shopping cart. Genuinely contested. Some people working in brand protection argue a MAP policy can reach a price shown in a cart. Others say a price a shopper sees only after adding the item is outside advertising altogether. They point to the Federal Trade Commission’s treatment of advertising for that reading. There is no settled answer we can hand you. Brands that care write a provision covering it and accept that it may be argued with.

Online ads. Banners, sponsored product placements, retargeting, email blasts. These are advertisements by any reading, and the prices in them are advertised prices.

Why the add-to-cart gate exists

A listing that hides the price until the part is in the basket is built to keep the advertised price off the page. Whatever the correct legal answer turns out to be, the design tells you what the seller is doing. It is worth recording as a pattern even where you decide not to act on it.

What to do with all this

Put your answer in the policy. Working it out during a dispute is the expensive version. Name the surfaces you treat as advertising, say what happens when a price is only visible after a click, and date the version. Then the argument with a reseller is about whether they followed a document, which is a much shorter conversation.

Our MAP monitoring service reads the figure a shopper ends up seeing, including the coupon, the bundle and the gate.