How To Find Unauthorized Sellers?

Unauthorized sellers or retailers who didn’t sign any MAP policy or dealer agreement with your brand can create a threat to your business’ image, integrity and trustworthiness. It also can cause a problem with your long-term or trusted online sellers or retailers as well. If unauthorized sellers are establishing a sale in places like Amazon and trying to get into the Buy Box, they can cut the prices for competition with no enforcement comes from MAP policies or dealer agreements. In websites like Amazon, buy box section can be tempting enough for any retailer for better sales, however if there is an unauthorized seller who is cutting the prices lower than the MAP can create more troubles for your brand. When trusted and MAP policy follower retailers are abiding the rules of your MAP policies to evade any problems in general, unauthorized sellers do not care. And this situation can create an unjust sale point for all of your retailers. Unauthorized sellers who enter a price war to cut the margins can create a trouble for manufacturer and the retailers at the same time.

How To Know Who Is Selling Your Products?

Knowing who is selling your product for which price can be life changing in the e-commerce. Seeing if there is any unauthorized seller for your product can be established by monitoring. Price or retailer monitoring software like PriceRest can provide a great monitoring process for the manufacturer to see their retailers’ actions. With the most advanced technology of PriceRest, manufacturers or brand owners can see the changes in the price tags and retailer policies hourly. PriceRest provides updated data to its users to monitor. And understanding who is selling your product online in a short term can help you to enforce your rules to protect your brand.

Taking action against those unauthorized retailers or sellers can be necessary to stop trademark infringement, unjust competitions, trademark problems, unfair trade practices and wrongfully made price changes in general. Unauthorized retailers may think of upgrading their sales with cutting the price and avoiding the customer support and warranties for your product. To prevent false or wrong shopping experiences that includes the name of your brand, seeking legal action can be important.

Sending Letters To Unauthorized Sellers

To prevent such sales, brand owners can send a well written cease and desist letters to those unauthorized sellers. A good cease and desist letter which is written by an antitrust lawyer can create a great difference in the behaviors of unauthorized sellers. Sending such letters to the biggest and largest unauthorized letters can create help your brand to establish a strong position to the smaller ones.

For a brand owner or a manufacturer, seeing who is selling their products for which price can be tricky situation without monitoring. However, with the right price monitoring software like PriceRest, they can see the general view when it comes to the sales. And it can create a better and regulated sales which is shaped by their own MAP policies. Establishing a monitoring system to prevent unauthorized sales can be tricky. Understanding how those unauthorized sellers received your products and closing those back doors to prevent these sales requires a strong monitoring system.

Keeping a strong monitoring process for MAP violations and unauthorized retailers is a never-ending process. To keep up with updated information regarding such cases, monitoring should continue full time. Seeing the unauthorized and authorized retailers’ action when it comes to your own MAP policies, and proceeding with necessary enforcements can be made with price and competition monitoring software.

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The pricing policies of a brand should be monitored at many different levels. However, the best monitoring method for pricing policies is the one that is made by the brand itself. Having a good pricing policy can make a legally solid ground for any brand. Pricing policies that do not violate antitrust laws can create a solid background for brands. Keeping a clear pricing policy is possible with self-monitoring. Who is going to keep up with the price monitoring process can change many things during e-commerce processes?

Self Price Monitoring Procedures

In the early days of e-commerce when there are no self-monitoring procedures, brand owners trusted their retailers to talk about policy violations of others. Most of the time, brand owners believed their retailers are monitoring their competitors’ prices for their business. The exchange of information between retailers and the brans was based upon retailers’ monitoring actions. When there were undercuts and policy violations, retailers were the ones who was the witnesses of such actions. Retailers were keeping an eye on their competitors to seek out any policy violations and reporting them to the brand. With the advancements in e-commerce and different styles of monitoring, there are still some retailers who are keeping an eye on their competitors to see if there is any policy violation. And retailers can benefit from brand loyalty programs by providing violation information regarding other retailers. However, solely trusting the retailers for seeking policy and price violations is a weak choice for preventing such actions. One of the biggest reasons for this is that retailers themselves can be the subject of such violation actions.

MAP Monitoring for such policy violations can be established by the brand for many different reasons. And with the advancements in e-commerce, they are not bounded to expect such monitoring actions from their retailers as well. With the right methods of monitoring their price policies, brand owners can be one step ahead of their retailers.

First of the reasons, agreements between brand owners and retailers can still be seen as tricky on many legal grounds. Since because there were many illegal agreements between retailers and brands back in the first days of e-commerce, there are still raised eyebrows about activities conducted by the retailers for brand owners. Despite there is a solid and unilateral pricing policy between the brand and retailer, some activities can be seemed as illegal for the “rule of reason”. Although it can change from country to country, brand owners should be careful with the agreements between themselves and their retailers. Any communication between the retailer and the brand owner can be presented to the court as evidence of an illegal agreement. It can be seen as an important illegal activity in the antitrust law. Even though there are no such signed papers and there is an only verbal agreement between the brand and the retailer, it can be presented as evidence to the court for illegal activity. This is the first reason why brand owners should not seek their retailers’ monitoring for their own pricing policies.

Promote Unfair or Uneven Enforcements

The second reason for self-monitoring is about not to promote unfair or uneven enforcement. To keep up with the implementation of minimum advertised price (MAP) or resale price maintenance (RPM), brand owners need a thorough application of rules and policies. Relying on only retailers for reporting violations will not going to be enough to see every situation. Especially, when there are automatic changes in the prices, due to the advancements in e-commerce. With the advancements in technology, retailers can change prices automatically. Automated price changes can be made with advanced technology in a second. To keep an eye in such changes with every retailer can be difficult and time-consuming for manual monitoring. If there is no such automated self-monitoring system, it will be extremely difficult to seek out changes that are made during the night, on weekends, or on holidays. When a retailer reports a violation and the brand owner is taking an action against it without knowing who else made the violations can be seen as favoritism. Establishing sanctions for only a few retailers who got caught and not establishing any sanctions for the ones who got away with it is not a solid policy. To stay away from such favoritism-like behaviors, brand owners should seek for a solid, automated self-monitoring method. Even though the retailers can be a valuable sources for violation reporting, they should not be the only source.

Market Dominating Monopolies

Another reason for self-monitoring is not being seen as market-dominating monopolies. Trusting the retailers or general distributors to monitor prices can be seen as a restraining action for trade. Communication between brand owners and retailers can be seen as restraining action for market dominance. Retailers can advantage of this situation to kill the competition and it can break the antitrust law. If brand owners keep trusting in their retailers, they should be careful with the intentions of retailers as well.

Self-monitoring actions are also good for sustainable policies for brands. Retailers can seek for such violations to report. However, there is no guarantee that they will do such monitoring for brands forever. Self-monitoring methods can be seen as a reliable and sustainable process for pricing policy protection.

Lastly, if a brand cut deals with a retailer due to a report from another retailer, they can get sued. In such actions, if reporting retailer was not honest with the reporting, brand owners can find themselves in such troubles in court as well.

Trusting only retailers for price violation reporting can be tricky and unreliable for no good reason. Keeping an eye to all of the retailers on equal ground is the duty of every brand owner for better business. To stay away from illegal actions or doubt, every brand owner should seek their own monitoring process.

To have a solid, sustainable, automated, and advanced price monitoring system, join PriceRest today!

If you also want to monitor your retailers or sellers on e-commerce, join PriceRest today. And see What PriceRest can do for you.

If there is an automated MAP monitoring software like PriceRest, brand owners can keep up with their monitoring in a sustainable way. With the advanced technology of PriceRest, brand owners will be provided with updated and automated data regarding their MAP policies.

There is a little detail when it comes to MAP violations. A MAP violation may not be an isolated and one-time event. Unregulated MAP policies may cause more than one violation by different retailers. When a retailer does not see any sanction after a MAP violation, others can follow in their footsteps. It is easier for retailers to get into such violations if there are no sanctions. And if a brand owner does not regulate their pricing policies and creates a ground for violations, retailers will follow. Many retailers seek price cuts for a competitive edge. And such price cuts can affect the MAP policies of a brand. If a brand lets pricing policy violations happen with no sanctions, retailers will not respect the brand, in terms of policies. MAP policy violations may create a chain reaction from retailers. They would lower the prices against the MAP policies, by knowing that there will be no enforcement.

If there is no enforcement when it comes to MAP policies, such violations can cause price erosions that can diminish the value of brands’ products. A regular stream of MAP violations can normalize diminished price points for consumers. Even though brand owners take action after such violations, consumers might still expect lower prices for products. And it can affect the perception of potential and actual customers when it comes to the products. This situation might create an unreliable image for the brand.

Pricing policies can have power only if there are enforcements for them. If there are no consequences for violations, they mean nothing. Preventing violations can only occur if it is good enough for monitoring and sanctions. Monitoring such events should be made by brand owners to seek out equal ground for retailers.

Policy violations may create a domino effect on brands’ general image. And such an effect will not do good for any brand owners. It can create diminished values of products and an unreliable image for brands. To stop such effects, brand owners should create reliable, automated, and updated self-monitoring services. Such updated data from retailers can be provided consistently, with the help of PriceRest.

If you also want to monitor your retailers or sellers on e-commerce, join PriceRest today. And see What PriceRest can do for you.