Today it’s a commonplace trend for adult novelty brands to have an enforceable MAP Policy or Minimum Advertised Price Policy for open market places. MAP policies for this industry protect price erosion on Amazon and other marketplaces and help to keep brand integrity in place.
MAP Policy Agreement – With a MAP policy, an approved adult novelty re-seller must agree to the specific terms of the agreement. This agreement is submitted with an online document or approval form. Once the acceptance of this agreement is approved, brands allow resellers to list the products on sale.
How are MAP Policies Enforced with Adult Novelties – Both brand Owners and Manufacturers will track the listed price with a brand protection agency, or a simple software program that monitors the pricing of each ASIN and marketplace.
The main objective of implementing a MAP Program for your own brand is to ensure an even playing field amongst adult novelty retailers’ profitbalty. The focus is to ensure that the brand’s products are not devalued by price automatic lowering with algorithm pricing programs on Amazon or a “race to the bottom with no profit”. Most pricing optimization software will allow a re-seller to “set and forget it” pricing policy, which creates this constant lowering to match the ASIN price or offer a lower price for the buy box.
Different Types of MAP Policies – MAP policies can restrict sales completely by marketplace or allow a seller to participate within a marketplace as long as they are compliant with the MAP Pricing. A newer version of MAP policies today is the enforcement of approved ASINs only. This type of agreement will restrict the seller to only use the “branded approved ASIN’s” for sale.
Distributor Participation with MAP Policies – as an approved distributor of multiple brands, we strictly enforce all minimum advertised price policies (MAP policy compliance) designated by our branded vendor partners to protect their product’s imagery, trademark, and pricing.
Review Your Brand’s MAP Policies before creating or listing ASINS. It is your responsibility to review your ASIN’s and marketplace before listing items. Re-sellers risk losing access to the distributor’s data feed, or termination on the market if they are not compliant with the respective MAP policies.
To view the current list of Adult Novelty MAP Policy Brands, Please follow the link here
