What is Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) Monitoring and How to Automate It?

Definition: Minimum Advertised Price (MAP)

MAP is price monitoring in e-commerce regarding third-party sellers. Many companies produce and sell their branded products online. But to expand their target audience, they allow other companies to retail their products. This is a great way to increase sales with minimal effort, but it also brings many challenges that need to be addressed:

• Pricing: Due to competitive pressure, third-party sellers are sometimes tempted to lower prices below a pre-agreed level set in agreements with the brand's suppliers. The latter is called the Minimum Advertised Price (or "MAP"), i.e., the minimum price at which a company can sell its products. Some third-party sellers are even willing to take losses on some products to attract customers and increase profits on others. However, this damages the brands that are being "discounted."  
• Branding: Today, sophisticated consumers do not just buy a product; they compare prices across different sites and read peer reviews. When third-party sellers lower prices on original brand products, it leads to a reduction in brand value. Of course, the third-party seller is indifferent—they managed to increase short-term profit margins and make a few quick and easy sales. But the perception of a devalued brand suffers, which in the long run can lead consumers to prefer a competing brand that they perceive as having a stronger "moat."
• Authenticity: Of course, there is the issue of counterfeits. Many sellers produce "lookalike" products and sell them as genuine. This is achieved through lower prices since much less investment is needed in advertising and brand building. Consumers may even be deceived into thinking these products are real. 
• Quality Assurance (QA): This brings us to the last point—quality control. It can be at the product level. For example, even a trusting customer who buys a counterfeit will likely notice that the quality of the ordered product leaves much to be desired. This can trigger a chain of events that by association can negatively impact brand reputation and conversion (e.g., unwanted Reddit discussions that discourage positive purchase decisions in the future).

But QA can also be in the form of checking messages in advertising campaigns and product listings. Imagine a third-party seller adding low-quality product images and writing false attributes in the marketplace listing. Or, say, they launch an advertising campaign that exaggerates the product's capabilities, effectively "over-selling" it and setting consumers up for disappointment. 

By collecting data from open sources, companies can monitor third-party seller activities and ensure that all pricing, marketing, and production comply with corporate guidelines.

MAP Use Cases and Practical Business Applications 

Below are 4 ways businesses currently use web data collection and monitoring in the context of MAP enforcement among third-party sellers:

1. Price Verification 

First and foremost, brands continuously collect real-time data on how sellers price their products. This data feeds into internal systems and algorithms that alert legal teams about violations of supplier agreements. The relevant team contacts them and demands immediate price changes, otherwise further action will be taken. After a certain period (e.g., a week), companies perform a second data collection to confirm compliance. They may even put the seller on a "blacklist" with periodic data collection tasks to verify long-term compliance. In extreme cases, non-compliant suppliers may be banned from selling the brand's products.

2. Advertising and Marketing 

When using web data in advertising campaigns or in e-commerce internal product marketing departments to analyze third-party campaigns, data monitoring can be a very useful tool. This can take various forms, such as checking that:

• Pricing published in ads complies with the brand's MAP guidelines
• Quality/resolution of visual images and their exact match to the actual product version
• Advertising messages comply with the company's brand book and approved brand description.

3. Quality Assurance and Counterfeit Prevention 

Collecting data from open sources using product description keywords, known/approved SKUs, product location information, and other identifiers. Companies can cross-reference and match lists of approved and unapproved sellers. They can also use specific product attributes to easily identify counterfeits, such as product size or color. Sometimes counterfeiters offer a purple product, while the original brand only offers it in green, blue, and gray. This data can trigger alarms about fraudulent activities.

4. Brand Protection

Brand protection is an umbrella term referring to anything that can damage a company's perceived value. From a data monitoring perspective, businesses need to:

• Scan search engines for brand mentions/relevant keywords
• Collect data from product pages/search results/categories on the marketplace 
• Monitor customer reviews that mention the company/products in question.

The logic is simple. Cybercriminals, regardless of their sophistication, must abide by many of the same "rules" and play the same "games" as legitimate companies. This means that fraudsters also have to optimize their listings and stores for SEO and their stores will be accountable to consumers through public reviews. It is the collection of such user "data footprints" that will allow catching and stopping these actors.

How to Automate Data Collection Monitoring?

For companies that require large-scale web data collection, an automated data collection tool can be an optimal solution. 

Here are a few simple steps for using collectors that can help companies protect their brands and monitor MAP compliance online:

Step 1: Select the target website and dataset. 

Step 2: Click the "Create Collector" button and choose the data retrieval method. This includes selecting:

• "real-time output" or "job completion (batch processing)". 
• Desired file format (JSON/NDJSON/CSV/XLSX).
• Delivery method, i.e., Email/Webhook/AWS/GCP/Azure/API Download SFTP/FTP.

Step 3: Run the collector and get instant results. 

Step 4: If necessary, take further action, such as contacting legal about violators.