What is MAAP?

Many suppliers will mention MAAP when setting up an account. They may even ask you to sign an agreement stating that you’ll abide by their MAAP policies. Well, what the heck is MAAP and why is it important to me?

What is MAAP?

MAAP stands for (I believe) Minimum Allowed Advertised Price. Basically they are saying that you can not openly advertise the price of an item lower than the MAAP requirement. Suppliers and manufacturers use this in an attempt to protect their products from discounting which aims to protect their brand’s reputation. They don’t want retailers selling their products for dirt cheap because that will eventually cheapen the brand and make it harder for anyone to make any margin on the products.

Why As A Drop Shipper Should I Care?

Because if a supplier has a MAAP requirement, and you are found violating it, you run the risk of loosing the privilege of selling the item, or in extreme cases, risk a lawsuit.

Is it legal?

In a word, yes. Keep in mind that a supplier can not tell you what you must sell an item for. That is called price fixing, and it is 100% illegal. But there is a big difference between price fixing and MAAP. Price fixing dictates sales price (again, illegal), MAAP dictates advertised price. You can still sell the item for whatever you want; you just can’t openly advertise it for less than MAAP.

The way around it

Ever go to an online store and it says “call for pricing”? Or something like: “the price is so low we can’t show you. Add it to your cart for the price (you can always remove it later)”? Well those stores are going around the MAAP requirements on those products. They are not advertising the price, but will tell you if you ask, either by calling in or adding it to your cart (considered intent to buy). The call in method is relatively simple to implement if you have a call center or some kind if customer service. The add to cart method is a little more difficult and would take some extra coding or software to work on most store platforms.

Conclusion

My feeling is that MAAP is very confusing to the consumer. Most don’t even know what it is. So sites that use one of the above methods probably lose some trust. It’s hard enough to get customers to buy, but when you add an extra step, many will just go somewhere else. In practice, I generally just put the actual price I’m offering. If it happens to be too low, I just move the price up to MAAP and move on. Consumers like to know their price up front, and any time it seems to be hidden, you’ll lose more than not.

One Response to “What is MAAP?”

1. JaneRadriges Says:
   June 13th, 2009 at 7:41 pm

   The best information i have found exactly here. Keep going Thank you

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