No Lack of Data? The famed information superhighway of the 1990s paved the way for better and quicker data. Now, in today's fast-paced world, there is no shortage of "the numbers. " In fact, it's estimated that the big data analytics market is set to reach $103 billion this year, with 97. 2% of organizations investing in big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI). It's not surprising given it's also...

They say waiting is the hardest part. At the start of 2023, we find ourselves still struggling to answer an important question about the U. S. economy, "will there or won't there be a recession? " This question has been debated for quite some time in the media, politics, and industry since the earliest days of COVID-19 and especially post-pandemic. A couple of weeks ago, we had another piece of the...

New Year's is notorious. It brings to mind celebrations, resolutions, and shedding the old to ring in the new. For retailers, this manifests itself in clearance sales, deep discounts, and inventory reduction. Before you can even say, "After-Christmas Sale," spring/summer products are out on the shelves and online. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, I was in a major retailer trying to finish up some...

Do you have a pet? If you are like 70% of the U. S. population, you likely do. We certainly love our furry family members as pet "ownership" shows no signs of slowing. In fact, COVID-19 only fueled this furry frenzy of pet ownership. Whether working remotely or just a bit lonely from social distancing, many Americans added a pet to their households. Now, more than 90. 5 million U. S. homes hear a bark,...

Drumroll, please…the next seven days will bring holiday shopping into one of its most exciting, climactic moments. It's once again time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. Traditionally, these have been two specific days' worth of discounts, deals, and attractive advertising. But over the years, this has morphed into sometimes an entire week or more for retailers' and e-tailers' biggest...

In just a handful of days, the retail season will be officially upon us. .. though if you've been shopping online lately, you've probably already noticed some e-tailers have jumped right past Jack-o-Lantern and went straight toward "Jack Frost Nipping at Your Nose. " And while this year's consumers are dealing with rising inflation, interest rates, gas prices, and talk of a big, looming recession,...

You have the right to remain silent…but you shouldn’t. Not when it comes to Minimum Advertised Pricing (MAP) violations. For manufacturers who want to maintain their brand integrity, create a level playing field for their retailers, and avoid degrading their revenues, the key to any good MAP policy is enforcement. You can write the “best” policy around, but if you don’t...

The just-released figures on e-commerce in the United States continue to show the popularity of online shopping. According to the Census Bureau, e-commerce retail sales in the U. S. for the second quarter of 2022 were an estimated $257 billion - an increase of nearly three percent from the first quarter of the year, and an even bigger increase of 6. 8% from Q2 2021. Not too shabby, given an inflated...

Introduction. In 2022, the retail sector has become highly competitive and saturated. In fact, maintaining optimized operations for retailers continues to get more difficult. With the rise of Amazon, retailers and consumers can easily compare prices of various products. The fact of the matter is that traditional retailers get frustrated when they hear consumers found the same product at a cheaper price...

Introduction. Today, monitoring retailers has become an important aspect of a standard brand protection strategy. On the other hand, problematic retailers become a serious threat to agreed pricing structures. It is one of the main reasons most companies outsource their production to OEMs or Original Equipment Manufacturers abroad. Companies grant production to OEMs for a specific volume of products...

It's no secret that Amazon makes life difficult for independent retailers. Every owner of an independent brick-and-mortar store has seen people come in, check out the products, and then order them online. Because Amazon is able to eliminate several layers of the supply chain and enjoy lower costs, it can offer low prices and tiny margins that most retailers just can't match. By selling through...

One of the most commonly pointed out advantages of a MAP policy is that it restricts price warfare. By setting a floor on prices, suppliers can maintain brand value and ensure an acceptable margin for themselves and their clients. But just how dangerous can price wars be? An ongoing clash between retail titans provides some answers. Walmart Summons a Crisis Weeting? In February of 2017, Walmart summoned...

Since it was founded in 1994, Amazon has gone through a lot of changes. Originally selling just books, it now carries almost any type of product that you can think of. Once a regular loss-maker, it now enjoys large profits primarily drawn from its cloud computing offerings. Since 2016, it has even had its first physical store location. However, there is one important change that Amazon has so far resisted....

Minimum Advertised Price policies are not universally popular, and not only because of angry discount retailers. At various times, politicians and the media have described them as a form of price-fixing, and called for them to be outlawed. However, there are major differences between MAP policies and price-fixing agreements that make comparisons between them misguided. What is price-fixing? ?Traditional...

Selling your products on Amazon can win a lot of exposure for your brand, but for many companies the associated costs just aren't worth it. Their marketplace system forces retailers to compete primarily on price, exerting downward pressure on prices. Your MAP policy is only of limited use here, as Amazon consistently refuses to enforce them, allowing retailers to undermine your pricing structure...

Your retail partners want you to use MAP enforcement software. A well-enforced MAP policy doesn't only protect your brand image and the prices that your products can command, it also protects your retail partners from damaging price wars and allows them to offer value-added service instead of racing to the bottom on service and price, protecting their brands along with yours. Adopting watertight...

Amazon's lax policies on resales make it a haven for counterfeiters and unauthorized sellers, as well as a headache for manufacturers. Some big-name companies have already quit the online marketplace, including sandal makers Birkenstock. While Amazon will act against counterfeiters, they do not enforce MAP policies, and so resellers can easily undercut authorized retailers and even capture the all-important...

No matter how watertight your MAP policy is, it will not protect your brand effectively if it is poorly enforced. Enforcing a MAP means striking a delicate balance. Weak and inconsistent enforcement may signal to retailers that they can get away with selling your products at too-low prices. However, over-aggressive enforcement actions may needlessly damage your relationship with your retail partners....

Amazon did over 135 billion dollars in sales for 2016, making it the largest online retailer in the world. For many consumers, Amazon is the first stop when looking for products to buy. The sheer size of the market available through Amazon makes it almost inevitable that your products will end up available there, whether it is offered by you, by authorized retail partners, or by unauthorized resellers....

Are your MAP enforcement strategies endangering your business? Instead of monitoring retailers themselves, many manufacturers rely on their retailers to police each other, saving themselves the effort and cost of proactive enforcement. This strategy is a relic of the pre-internet age, when monitoring retail prices meant paying in-person visits to stores. Despite the risk of lawsuits, manufacturers...

MAP policies are an excellent tool for manufacturers. They allow you to defend your brand image and the price at which your products are sold, while also encouraging good, value-added retailers to work with you as they do not have to fear being undercut by cut-price sellers. However, MAP policies are far from foolproof. Manufacturers adopting them often make costly and dangerous mistakes. In this article,...

Business owners cannot afford to ignore brand equity. In fact, many marketing experts have argued that strong brand equity is one of the most valuable assets that a company can have. In this article, we take a look at brand equity and the effects that it can have on your business. What is brand equity? Brand equity, put formally, is the bundle of assets and liabilities attached to a brand that add...

Unrestricted price competition can be devastating. It forces a race to the bottom that destroys profit margins, erodes brand image, and can lead to reduced product and service quality as companies attempt to lower prices even further. To insulate yourself from this, your business needs to develop pricing power, the ability to charge more than your competitors without losing customers. Pricing power...

It is a fact, mispricing of your products by retailers can do serious damage to your brand. Building a reputation as a high-quality, premium brand is a slow process, but destroying that same reputation is an extremely quick one. As discussed in previous articles, many manufacturers have seen their brand degraded, perhaps irreparably, by retailer price wars. It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that some...

Retailers like to offer discounts. Reducing the price of a popular item is a great way to bring in more customers, and it can be done extremely easily. Changing the product itself takes time, and might make it less popular with your customers. Lowering the price temporarily is quick, easy, and in the short term almost guaranteed to raise sales. In the long term, though, too-frequent discounting can...

America's department stores have had a rough few years, thanks to a sluggish recovery in consumers' purchasing power and the increasing adoption by brands of business models that don't involve them. One of the ways in which they have fought back is aggressive discounting, selling products from well-known brands at prices far below the suggested retail price. This is good for the department store, but...

Not everyone likes Minimum Agreed Price policies. To their detractors, MAPs look a lot like price fixing, with manufacturers and retailers colluding to shut out competition. It's a serious accusation: price fixing has been illegal under federal law in the United States since the 19th century, and antitrust cases brought against companies have resulted in heavy fines and even enforced breakups. FTC...

No matter how well-written it is, your MAP policy is only ever as good as your ability to enforce it. Maintaining a Minimum Advertised Price requires constant monitoring of your product's prices, swift communication with policy violators, and a willingness to blacklist retailers where necessary. Systems like MapCop make this easy by constantly monitoring prices, automatically generating emails...

Monitoring your retailers is an essential part of any brand protection strategy. However, problematic retailers are not the only threat to your agreed pricing structures. Many companies choose to outsource production to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) abroad. They grant the OEM permission to make a specific number of products, and then share all of the necessary intellectual property to make...

Enforcing a MAP (Minimum Agreed Price) policy can protect your brand’s image while also encouraging good value-added retailers to stock your product. Failure to do so, on the other hand, can lead to a vicious cycle in which your brand image and product quality are degraded by unchecked price competition between retailers. Price Erosion Leads to Poor Service. Internet-savvy consumers can research...

Are your products being sold under MAP and potentially damaging your brand? You probably already know that MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) is an agreement between manufacturer and retailer to maintain a minimum price when advertising your products. When retailers violate their MAP policy agreements, it can severely damage your brand and lead to loss of sales and bad relations with your customers. Ensuring...