Why Should Manufacturers Monitor Their Retailers?

Preparing a MAP policy and creating a good system for law enforcement with the help of an antitrust lawyer is always a great idea for the manufacturer or brand owner to protect their products and their integrity. Many brand owners put a great effort for their pricing policies. Pricing policies and a good MAP policy can provide many things to the manufacturer or a brand owner. There is a significant effort for providing good service and price with the product they would like to sell. Retailers, on the other hand, are responsible for establishing a good system to ensure that they are abiding the rules of manufacturer.

However, with this effort of abiding the rules, they are also responsible for good sale numbers and keep up with the competition in e-commerce. To do so, they seek for many different options to create an edge for competition with other retailers. For example, getting in the buy box section of Amazon can create more sale numbers to any retailers. To get into that buy box, however, can be tricky and require a price competition between retailers. Cutting prices to keep up with competition may sound as a good idea from a far, however, retailers should understand that there can be terrible results with this action.

Who is going to check the MAP policy-based price tags?

Even though protecting MAP policy-based price tags of a manufacturer can lay on the shoulders to the retailers, sometimes that situation can be tricky. Making those policies are intact can be made by monitoring. The best way to understand and to keep control over the price tags of retailers is manufacturers’ or brand owners’ monitoring techniques.

What is more important is that creating a price monitoring system?

Establishing a decent and good pricing policies under the antitrust laws is important. What is more important is that creating a monitoring system to look at every retailer and online seller. With monitoring, policy enforcement processes can be made quite easily. Every manufacturer or brand owner should create their own monitoring process to see the reality of their sales.

Many manufacturers or brand owners, however can rely on the information that their retailers are providing to them. Without any price monitoring, they just expect that online sellers to abide the rules. And this can be a really tricky situation. There are different reasons to provide a good MAP Monitoring by themselves for any manufacturers or brand owners.

Avoid Price Violations

• First of all, ill-supervised MAP policies can be seen as price fixing. Even though minimum advertised price policies can be unilaterally legal, price fixing can be seen as problematic. If there is a bad execution in the MAP policies for some retailers on an inequal ground, it can be seen as against the law. Price fixing agreements between brand owners and retailers can is seen as illegal and it can create a problem in the trade. If there is no such monitoring system for your retailers, you can be seen as a part of a fixed price agreement. And this situation can create problems for your brands’ name and future.
• Secondly, creating an unfair and uneven ground for all of your retailers can be perceived problematic by your retailers. If your retailer does not report its own violation and there is no such monitoring system that you created, other retailers can see this as favoritism and it can violate the trust between them. An uneven price policy can create problems between retailers. When a retailer does not trust the manufacturer in regards of even or fair trade, they can decide to not to sell their products in the long run, and it can affect sales, integrity and brand image.
• Thirdly, manufacturers or brand owners have a duty to prevent uneven competition between retailers or online sellers. If a manufacturer or a brand owner does not take necessary actions against the MAP policy violations, competition between retailers can take an ugly turn. Not protecting the rights of other retailers or online sellers can give the violator retailer advantageous competitive edge. This advantageous competition edge can destroy the general and even competition between retailers. And such situation can expose the manufacturer in a lawsuit.

All in all, there are a lot of manufacturers who rely on their retailers when it comes to their own MAP or other price policies that are established under the antitrust law. Without monitoring, they can cause many legal problems in general. However, with such advanced and automated monitoring systems that they can establish with the help of PriceRest, manufacturers or brand owners can see price violations and take necessary actions by themselves. And with such strong monitoring services, they can prevent any lawsuit against them.  Keeping an even ground for each retailer with the strong policy enforcement in their hands, manufacturers or brand owners can create a solid ground for a competitive and legal e-commerce existence.

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