Best Practices to Avoid Walmart MAP Violations

You might have come across the term MAP, which stands for Minimum Advertised Price. MAP is not necessarily the price of the product in the retailer’s store, but rather the lowest price that can be displayed online or in advertisements. Avoid Walmart MAP violations, as these can severely affect pricing consistency and brand value. MAP policies, which vary depending on the brand and manufacturer, are created by the product’s manufacturer to ensure fair competition. Companies invest substantial effort in developing these policies and continuously monitor the market for violations.

Best Practices to avoid Walmart MAP Violations

The agreements between manufacturers, retailers, and distributors regarding MAP policies must not be broken. Advertising below the minimum price, for example, violates Walmart MAP violations. These policies help prevent brand devaluation and protect retailers’ margins, but some resellers violate them to offer discounts or use repricing software to temporarily bypass MAP rules. To avoid Walmart MAP violations, it’s essential to adopt best practices. Brand Alignment provides top-tier software to help manage and prevent these violations. Here are key best practices for avoiding Walmart MAP violations.

Drafting and Enforcing a Comprehensive MAP Price Monitoring Policy

The first step in countering MAP violations and reclaiming control of your prices is formulating a fair and comprehensive MAP monitoring policy. The established policy should align with both parties involved (the manufacturer and retailers/resellers). In addition, it should be detailed and specific to help maintain a uniform brand image across all resellers. Afterward, the manufacturer should establish stringent measures that will effectively enforce MAP. For instance, you can engage Brand Alignment for their advanced techniques to identify serial numbers and parallel imports and conduct further investigations.

Solidifying Distribution Channels

A leaky supply chain can cost your brand. Unauthorized selling, also known as the gray market, is part of Walmart MAP violations. The good news? This shouldn’t be a cause for panic. All you’ll need to do is research and identify the channels through which your distributors are supplying the products. Also, you’ll need information about the retailers and resellers you are selling to.

Identifying Violators Using MAP Monitoring Software

Technology has drastically advanced, and the future of retail lies online. Many manufacturers prioritize pricing, making it essential to use MAP monitoring software to reduce price wars and prevent brand erosion. Brand Alignment offers the best software in the market for brand protection. This software continuously reviews your brand’s pricing, helping to avoid Walmart MAP violations. The monitoring tool provided by Brand Alignment reveals the name, contact information, and prices advertised by each retailer. Typically, MAP monitoring software focuses on online platforms like Walmart. Its ability to provide detailed insights makes it the most valuable tool for any retailer looking to avoid Walmart MAP violations.

Intelligent and actionable data is guaranteed when using the Brand alignment software in monitoring the retailer’s marketplaces and pages. The strategies utilized by Brand Alignment are tried and tested, and therefore, manufacturers can avoid MAP violations effortlessly. On the other hand, a poor monitoring tool can make it difficult for a retailer to monitor MAP violators. However, it is essential to select a monitoring software that is compatible with your website. Sometimes, trusting software blind can be dangerous. For instance, some MAP monitoring software indicates that they can monitor your products across the web, which is not always the case. Also, it is wise to inquire how many websites MAP monitoring software can support.

Avoid Walmart MAP Violations with enforcing alerts

It’d be useless to identify violators and do nothing about it. Once you’ve established the person violating your brand’s MAP policy, it is time to take action. Sending a cease-and-desist letter would be an excellent place to start. However, manufacturers have to formulate different strategies for dealing with other offenders. For instance, how you treat your long-term authorized resellers shouldn’t be the same as you treat unauthorized resellers. Look at it this way: If retailers sell your products without your permission, you are right to take aggressive action without worrying about antitrust issues. Why? Your issues with the retailer are not price- but rather authorization-related.

On the other hand, if your authorized are caught with a MAP violation, they may suffer consequences as a warning. You can only strike them off your listings after a second violation. Need more help enforcing violation alerts? Explore the wide range of software options Brand Alignment has to offer.

Researching on Unauthorized Reseller Tricks

Retailers have mastered the art of evading pricing and brand guidelines. To protect your brand, it is essential to understand their tactics. Unauthorized resellers—who sell your products without authorization—can acquire your items from retail stores or distributors, or sometimes even directly from you without disclosing their intent to sell them online. This group can undermine your brand’s efforts to maintain consistent representation across e-commerce platforms, violating your brand’s culture and style. Furthermore, these resellers may limit your brand’s ability to run ads and could also be involved in Walmart MAP violations, damaging your brand and potentially using copyrighted images without permission.

Unauthorized resellers may use the tactics below to evade brand owners:

Creating new listings for the slightest variations in the product specifications. Besides confusing customers, these duplicate listings could delay a manufacturer from detecting the presence of unauthorized resellers on their listings.
Using a store name different from their legal entity name
Frequently changing their store name
Switching between multiple seller accounts
Providing inaccurate addresses to cover their tracks

Brand protection services like Brand Alignment can aid in identifying the resellers via their seller notification process and reseller database.

Rewarding Retailers for Compliance

A little motivation goes a long way. The brand could lose out in the long run when retailers and resellers violate MAP guidelines. Brands that sell below a product’s advisement price tend to attract more website traffic and increase sales. Resultantly, legitimate retailers suffer as there won’t be fairness in competition. After determining the seller selling your product on Walmart, it is essential to establish whether they follow your MAP guidelines and reward them if necessary. The reward can be in the form of laxity of MAP rules during holidays such as Easter and Christmas. During promotional seasons the laxity of rules must be outlined in guidelines.

Suppose Walmart is under-pricing your products in its stores. As one of the largest retailers in the US, with an extensive network of chain stores, Walmart MAP violations can severely impact your brand’s pricing integrity. In such situations, the most effective way for a brand to address violations is to stop distributing to the specific retailer. However, with Walmart’s massive consumer base, no brand would want to risk losing that partnership. This is where implementing and enforcing a comprehensive MAP policy becomes crucial to maintaining pricing discipline without sacrificing access to major retail channels.

Conducting Reviews

In addition to a brand having a MAP policy with its retailers, it should also limit the products’ distribution to just a few of them. A MAP policy includes physical stores, the internet minimum advertised price (IMAP), and the Electronic minimum advertised price (eMAP). In addition, distributors should be able to provide authorized retailer agreements. When signing the retailer agreements, remember to ask for clarification where required. Dealing with well-known retailers significantly reduces the risk of MAP policy violation.

Final Thoughts

Walmart MAP violations can have a detrimental effect on your brand and significantly hurt the profits of your retailers. Ensuring strict MAP compliance across all platforms is key to maintaining your brand’s value. Choosing Brand Alignment as your brand protection service provider is the best decision you can make to safeguard your pricing strategy and prevent these violations from undermining your business. Brand Alignment provides the best software that is reliable and accurate.

Thank you for reading our post, “Best Practices to Avoid Walmart MAP Violations.” We hope you found it helpful.

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December 15, 2023 by Brand Alignment

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