How to Stop MAP Violations & Remove Unauthorized Sellers

One of the most significant headaches for Brands selling to Amazon (1P – Vendor Central) or directly on Amazon (3P – Seller Central) is MAP violations and the proliferation of unauthorized sellers selling your product and competing for the buy-box. This proliferation often results in a race to the bottom where brands are competing with their own suppliers (or Amazon’s 1P algorithm) to win the buy-box. Not only can losing the buy-box hit your topline sales and eat into profit margins, but it can cause conflicts with other channels. No one wants to get a call from a brick & mortar retailer about why Amazon is selling below the lowest MSRP price.
MAP stands for Minimum Advertised Price, which is the lowest price that a seller agrees to display on a product for sale. As re-sellers or whole sellers gain access to your product, they may violate your MAP policy by listing your products at a discounted rate on Amazon to win the Buy-Box.
We can help you put a wholesale dealer agreement in place with explicit language about your Amazon re-sell policy and your pricing policies. Then we’ll continuously monitor and enforce your policies.
The first thing we do when partnering with brands is to help them gain control by removing unauthorized sellers to win the buy box and get pricing to MSRP for higher revenue & margins.When we began our partnership with a multi-million dollar beauty brand, they had 90 MAP violations and 30+ unauthorized sellers. Within four months were able to reduce that to five MAP violations and seven unauthorized sellers. After 12 months, we reduced map violations by 99%.
The result was that the brand restored pricing to strategic MSRP levels, and they began to win the buy-box on their products 95-100% of the time. Now the brand is experiencing higher retail sales and an increased profit margin on Amazon.Want to see how we can help your brand? Get your free assessment.
Learn more about how we can help your Amazon business succeed!