MAP violations hurt your margins and can cause lasting damage to your brand. And when you have hundreds or thousands of them, it can be hard to tell who’s really at fault. Where do you even begin correcting the problem?
If you’re manually monitoring and enforcing your MAP policy, it may be tempting to give your retail partners the benefit of the doubt. They care the most about your brand and their relationship with you, so they’re the least likely to violate your policy, right?
But there are some hidden ways your retail partners may be violating your policy. And without advanced MAP monitoring software like Prowl, you might never notice how your retail partners are gaming the system.
Here’s how we help you peel back the curtain on MAP violations.
See who moved first
Every MAP violation hurts. But some hurt more. The first MAP violation typically sets off a chain reaction. It’s the domino effect: one seller lowers their price, and everyone else follows their lead in order to stay competitive. This often happens automatically because sellers use repricing software, which detects price changes and makes adjustments accordingly.
Without MAP monitoring software, all you see is the aftermath: all the dominoes fell down. By the time it gets to that point, it’s hard to blame your retail partners. They’re just trying to stay in the game.
But someone tipped the first domino. And it’s often the same handful of sellers. When they change their price, that’s where the problem starts. With PROWL, these sellers can’t hide in the crowd of other violations. We’ll show you which seller “moved” first and started the domino effect.
PROWL digs through the wreckage to see if one of your trusted partners is consistently triggering a landslide of MAP violations.
Discover connections between sellers and retailers
Unknown sellers are one of the biggest problems brands have with MAP enforcement. If you can’t track down contact information for a seller, enforcing your pricing policy becomes a nightmare. PROWL tracks down the information you need to contact sellers who violate your policy, including any aliases they sell under. Our software identifies who owns whom, which sometimes reveals connections between your trusted retail partners and not-so-trusted sellers.
If your retail partner owns another seller that keeps committing MAP violations, you don’t just want to take that up with the individual seller. You need to fix the problem upstream. While your retail partner may not be violating your price in their main storefront (at least not until the domino effect begins), they’re doing it through another channel—one they think you don’t know is theirs.
Enforce your pricing policy
You can’t protect your price if you don’t know who’s doing the damage. PROWL removes the shield of anonymity and gives you the tools to penalize sellers—whether they’re complete strangers or retailers you thought you could trust.
Schedule a demo to see how PROWL automates MAP monitoring and increases visibility into violations.
