Picture being a manufacturer in the early-20th century. You’d have to rely heavily on trust and personal relationships with retailers to make sure your products were priced right in different stores. The idea of enforcing a consistent price across different sellers was nearly impossible.
There was no easy way to monitor if retailers were sticking to your pricing, so you might have had to visit stores in person or depend on word-of-mouth reports to ensure that your pricing strategies were being followed.
If a retailer decided to advertise a lower price, it could take weeks or even months before you found out. By then, the damage to your brand’s value could have already been done, and that’s the start of another tragic story.
Traditional methods that arose in response to these challenges included manual monitoring, spreadsheets and databases, periodic check-ins or notices, enforcement actions, etc.
Fortunately for business owners, technology has enabled them to move past manual violation monitoring and leave it where it belongs: in the past. Fast forward to today, with modern tools like Power Automate, ensuring MAP compliance has become far more efficient so you don’t have to worry about chasing down retailers.
But what exactly does automated MAP violation monitoring entail?
In this article, we’ll cover:
- The basics of Minimum Advertised Price (MAP).
- The role of automation in MAP compliance and its appeal to sellers.
- A detailed exploration of one of our projects involving Amazon.
What is the Minimum Advertised Price (MAP)?
To get what this case study is about and fully grasp its insights and impacts, let’s start by understanding MAP (Minimum Advertised Price).
Shoppers often check product prices from various retailers before they buy. Sometimes, stores might advertise a product at a lower price than they sell it for. This can be a tactic to attract customers.
Suppose there’s a toy manufacturer that makes a popular toy. A store might advertise the toy as being on sale for $40 to get people to visit the store, even though the actual selling price is $50.
If too many stores advertise a product for very low prices, it can hurt the product’s image by making it look cheap or less desirable.
So now the manufacturing company has decided that they don’t want any store to show this toy in their ads for less than $50. They want to make sure that the product always looks valuable by setting a minimum price for ads.
This is called MAP, a pricing policy used by manufacturers to ensure that their products are advertised at or above a certain price.
By setting a minimum advertised pricing policy, the company ensures that all stores have to advertise the toy for at least $50. This prevents any store from advertising the product too cheaply to attract customers unfairly. It also keeps the toy’s image consistent and helps stores compete on things other than price like customer service.
The MAP policy helps keep the product’s value intact and ensures fair competition by preventing misleading advertising practices.
Each manufacturer may create its own MAP policy manual which can differ in terms of the minimum price, enforcement mechanisms, and conditions. Retailers agree to these policies as part of their partnership with the manufacturer.
Using Automation to Better Enforce MAP Policies and Why It Matters to Sellers
Manufacturers enforce their MAP policies through several methods including contractual agreements, monitoring tools, regular audits, enforcement actions, and retailer relations.
Automation technology plays a crucial role in enforcing MAP policies, significantly enhancing one key enforcement method – regular audits. By automating the auditing process, manufacturers can efficiently carry out MAP violation tracking and verify compliance with MAP policies across a wide range of retailers.
Automated tools can quickly gather and analyze data on pricing across different platforms, identify discrepancies, and generate reports, allowing manufacturers to detect violations promptly and take corrective actions.
This not only streamlines the enforcement process but also reduces the potential for human error and ensures consistent MAP policy monitoring.
Why Sellers Invest
Ideally, manufacturers invest in the best MAP compliance monitoring tools to protect their brand and ensure that all sellers adhere to their pricing policies.
However, it’s a common practice for sellers to invest in MAP pricing compliance so they can ensure that competing sellers adhere to the manufacturer’s MAP pricing policy. This benefits them in several ways:
- Competitive Advantage: Sellers want to ensure they are not undercut by competitors who might not adhere to MAP policies. By enforcing MAP compliance, they can maintain fair pricing and avoid price wars that can erode profit margins.
- Margin Protection: If MAP violations lead to aggressive pricing, it can impact the seller’s profit margins. Monitoring and enforcing MAP compliance helps protect their margins.
- Enhanced Reputation: Resellers who ensure MAP compliance can build a reputation as reliable and trustworthy partners, which can be beneficial for long-term business relationships with manufacturers and customers.
- Reduces Unauthorized Competition: Identifying and addressing unauthorized sellers helps limit competition from those who are not part of the official distribution network.
Bitcot’s Automation Solution for Efficient MAP Violation Monitoring
For our client, monitoring and managing MAP violations was a significant challenge due to the vast number of products and sellers involved. The lack of detailed seller information further complicated our client’s ability to address these violations effectively.
To begin, let’s look at how our client initially handled this task manually.
The Blueforest web application, developed by their team for internal use, was at the heart of their process. It’s integrated with Amazon’s central APIs to help them manage and optimize their product listings.
- Initial Data Extraction: The client used the Blueforest app to extract data related to MAP violations.
- Identifying Violations: On checking the Blueforest portal, if no MAP violations were detected for the day, the process would end. However, if violations were identified, they were flagged either by the team or through other sources like vendors present on the Amazon page.
- Detailed Violation Analysis: For any detected violations, details like seller ID, price, whether the seller was winning the buy box, and whether the product was fulfilled by Amazon were documented.
- Cross-Referencing and Validation: To gain more insights, the seller ID was entered into Keepa, the second tool used in the process. Keepa provided additional details about the company, including their statistics, targeted projects, and products they were focusing on.
- In-Depth Examination: The team examined the violation details more thoroughly to understand the nature of the MAP pricing violation. This included analyzing the seller’s data from Keepa to determine how the violation impacted the brand and what actions needed to be taken.
- Reporting and Action: Based on the analysis, the team compiled reports and planned further actions to address the violations.
To ensure efficiency, our team implemented an automated policy management system.
Our project leveraged Power Automate’s automation capabilities and Keepa’s comprehensive data management tools to streamline the advertised price monitoring and enforcement.
Power Automate automates repetitive tasks, integrates data sources, and ensures timely notifications and reporting. Keepa is a powerful tool for Amazon product tracking and analytics, facilitating the automated retrieval and management of seller details for compliance workflows.
These tools allow our client to efficiently manage MAP compliance, protect their brand, and ensure a fair competitive environment.
This project involved a process that was split into two primary workflows:
- Extracting MAP Violation Data: This involves identifying and extracting data from the Blueforest portal to find products that were not following MAP policies.
- Extracting Seller Information: This involves retrieving detailed information about the violating sellers from the Keepa portal to enhance the data set.
Flow 1: Extracting MAP Policy Violation Data
1. Login: The bot automatically accesses the Blueforest portal at https://blueforestapp.com/#/login and inputs predefined credentials.
2. Data Access: If the login is successful, the system accesses the “Map Report” tab, where data related to MAP violations is stored. If login fails, an error email is sent to notify the concerned parties.
3. Data Extraction: Once inside the map report, the bot tries to extract the details. If no details are found, a report is received stating “No product found.” If a product is found, it indicates whether it has been either self-violated or violated by competitors.
4. Filtering: Predefined filters are applied automatically to narrow down the MAP violations related to both the client’s products and those of competitors.
5. Extraction: The automation extracts key data points from the filtered map report including:
Main Table:
- ASIN
- Brand Name
- MAP Pricing
Product Table (after clicking the product name):
- Seller ID
- Current Price
- Buy Box Status
- Fulfillment by Amazon
6. Storage: All extracted information is automatically saved into an Excel sheet (output sheet), providing an organized and easily accessible record for further analysis.
Flow 2: Extracting Seller Information
1. Login: The bot automatically accesses the Keepa portal at https://keepa.com/ and inputs predefined credentials.
2. Retrieval: If the login is successful, the system accesses the “Data” tab, where various tools and datasets are available. If login fails, an error email is triggered to alert the relevant team of the issue.
3. Seller Lookup: The system selects the Seller Lookup tool which allows searching for detailed information about specific sellers.
4. Seller ID: The Seller ID obtained from the Flow 1 is automatically input into the Seller Lookup tool.
5. Search: The search is initiated to retrieve information related to the specific Seller ID.
6. Seller Name Extraction: The system obtains the seller’s name and adds this information to the output sheet from Flow 1.
7. Search: The system opens the client directory to find additional information by searching the seller’s name.
8. Additional Details Extraction: The system extracts other important seller information including:
- Email Address
- Contact Details
- Other Information (e.g. location, business name)
9. Data Sheet Updation: All the extracted seller details are automatically added to the output sheet from Flow 1. This ensures a comprehensive dataset that links product violations to specific sellers.
How We Solved Complex Challenges in the Project
During the execution of these workflows, we encountered several key challenges related to data consistency and system access.
One major issue was ensuring accurate data extraction from both portals. This required meticulous attention to login credentials and the stability of the portals themselves. When login processes failed, we implemented a system to automatically send error emails, enabling prompt troubleshooting and minimizing downtime.
The main issues were related to portal stability and initial login failures due to stringent security measures. We successfully addressed these issues, ensuring the process runs smoothly.
Another significant challenge was integrating data from two different sources. This task demanded careful management to maintain data consistency and prevent duplication.
To address this, we adopted clear and consistent data structures within our Excel sheets. This approach ensured that each piece of information was accurately aligned and easily cross-referenced, which greatly facilitated data integration and analysis.
As the data volume increased, we adjusted our scripts to manage large datasets efficiently and ensure scalability.
By sticking to these processes and tackling challenges as they came up, we were able to give our clients solid, actionable insights into their MAP compliance and seller activities. This careful handling of data and methodical problem-solving meant our client could get accurate and valuable information to support their business needs.
The Transformative Results Achieved by the Client
By automating MAP compliance, the project reduced manual monitoring efforts, minimized pricing violations, enhanced data accuracy, and improved overall market positioning. This integration not only improved compliance rates but also provided valuable insights into pricing trends and seller behavior.
By implementing Bitcot’s automation solution, our client achieved significant improvements in managing MAP compliance:
- Efficient MAP Price Violation Monitoring: Automation streamlined the process to identify MAP violations and document them. The use of Power Automate and Keepa integrates seamlessly with the Blueforest portal, allowing for quicker and more accurate data extraction and analysis.
- Enhanced Competitive Advantage: Our client is now able to maintain fair pricing across the board, preventing competitors from undercutting prices and ensuring a level playing field. By safeguarding against aggressive pricing strategies, they were able to preserve their profit margins.
- Improved Margin Protection: Automated detection and reporting of MAP violations allows our client to swiftly address issues that could otherwise lead to price erosion.They successfully protected their profit margins from potential threats posed by unauthorized pricing practices.
- Strengthened Brand Reputation: Ensuring compliance with MAP policies enhances our client’s reputation as a trustworthy and reliable partner. This positive perception strengthened long-term business relationships with both manufacturers and customers, building greater trust and loyalty.
- Reduction in Unauthorized Competition: The solution enables our client to identify and address unauthorized sellers effectively. By curbing competition from sellers outside the official distribution network, they maintain control over their distribution channels and pricing policies.
- Streamlined Data Management: The automation of data extraction and processing from the Blueforest and Keepa portals creates a comprehensive and organized dataset. This improved the client’s ability to analyze and act upon MAP violations efficiently, leading to more informed decision-making.
Final Thoughts
Managing MAP compliance can be tough, and we understand that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for every brand’s needs. Having been in the MAP monitoring game for years, we know that effective compliance requires more than just a standard tool.
That’s why we’re continually evolving our automation solution to meet the unique needs of our clients.
Our goal is to empower clients with a comprehensive view of both violations and the sellers responsible for them, offering deeper insights that enable our clients to take corrective actions quickly and effectively. We’re constantly refining our approach to ensure it meets the complex demands of MAP enforcement.
Automating Price List Data Processing with Robotic Process Automation
For the same client, we tackled a different project to automate price sheet data processing. Read the full article.
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We aim to be more than just a development company – we want to be a trusted partner that simplifies MAP monitoring and helps our clients manage their compliance effortlessly. This way, eCommerce stores can focus on growing their businesses without worrying about MAP issues.
Get in touch to see how we can help streamline your MAP compliance and support your business with automation-based MAP compliance software.
