MAP pricing is Minimum Advertised Pricing. This is something set up by the manufacturer or distributor of a product. A retailer selling the product must adhere to MAP pricing when advertising online. So if they got a good deal on something and can discount it, that’s fine, but they can’t advertise it for less than whatever the MAP pricing is. So they would post “contact us for pricing”. The intention of MAP pricing is to prevent one retailer from drastically undercutting another if they sell the same product. It also keeps the product from being “devalued” in the eyes of the consumer.
Sometimes, but most vendors don't even allow that.
HP for example, for their printers, will not allow me to display in public to anyone a price below their MAP. I cannot list it, I cannot put it in an ad, it cannot be on a banner, and it cannot show up in a cart.
If someone walks into the store though, I'm legally allowed to sell it for whatever price I want, because a vendor cannot set a selling price, only an advertised price.
So I can either list their MAP price, which is the same MAP price you'll get from Amazon, NewEgg, or anywhere else, or I can list "Call for Pricing" and offer people a lower price.
The problem is that "call for pricing" never works. No one calls for the price.
Yeah I'm gonna go out on a limb and say 99.99% of the "call us for pricing" pages are not the company just chomping at the bit to offer me a lower price than I expected if only their hands weren't tied.
Yup, store I worked at ran 15-25% off coupons frequently and on the back side listed almost every brand we sold as excluded to avoid MAP issues. We only ever denied it if the coupon took us into the red which was super rare.
You're thinking like a peasant. We should make him enough money to be able to buy the island, then discard it after the wedding's over because, honestly, who wants to keep a used island?
Many manufacturers have unilateral pricing policies these days which means that no sales below MAP are permitted, period. It's totally unenforceable in the EU, but common in the USA.
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u/_shaftpunk 5h ago
As someone who works retail, there are rules about advertising below MAP pricing.