I can’t say that I agree with all that. With MAP, everything sells at the same price, unless you know the secret code/people. There is no competition and some of the manufacturers set a high MAP, whether the brand / product performance, quality or support warrant it or not. Without MAP, good products will sell at market bearing prices. Lesser / bad products will not sell and fall out of the market. It may finally drive some of the low to middle end manufacturers who are pretending to be high end out of the markets, but I doubt it would significantly stifle innovation or development, if at all. In my view, more MAP only means higher profits and lead to higher prices for all. Otherwise, why don’t they put MAP on everything? After all, you say it benefits all of us and leads to more sales.
Well put bugsy36. Racer I can really only see MAP being anti-consumer in situations like Beats or Apple, where there isn’t much of a way around it at all.
Actually, there is MAP on practically everything. Most just do not know it.
As for anti-consumer...when has that been any different? Sellers and buyers have always been on the opposite sides of the table but there are things that are done by both parties that benefit the other. As a seller I want to get all your money and as a buyer I do not want to give you anything. neither one of those can actually work so a middle ground of understanding is needed.
According to what I’ve seen MAP is “Minimum Advertised Pricing” and it is imposed by manufacturers. I have seen firsthand the problems it can cause. I purchased a plasma tv from hhgregg that I was very happy with and when looking for a tv for my mother returned to the store to find they no longer carried any panasonic products. The reason? They were caught selling below the manufacturer’s MAP limits. If a seller can price an item low and still make a profit they should be allowed to do so without the threats to cut off supply of merchandise. MAP is a case of collusion to impose inflated prices on consumers.
The MAP did not cause the problem. That was HHgregg trying to undercut the others. MAP has to be enforced by the manufacturer otherwise it falls in the monopoly or price fixing category in legal terms.
MAP is price fixing. It’s no different than the case years ago where the major grocery chains were found guilty of price fixing, fined, and forced to compensate consumers for artificially inflated prices. In the OP you stated:
Do you ever ask yourself why you have to defend manufacturers from us, the evil consumers?
I can find virtues in almost any subject if i look hard enough, it does not make them a good idea.
MAP is a form of price fixing which is legal, there are many policies that aim to reproduce profitable or discriminatory activity that has been made illegal but just barely remain on the right side of the law.
Whether he is or not is not really the point, and we can discuss this topic subjectively, as brought up several times before.
Btw, the premise of the OP is flawed for MAP is ‘minimum advertised price’, and it’s imposed by the manufacturer, and I know first hand of one manufacturer who is prowling the forum for any violator of their product’s MAP pricing
from its dealers.
Dealers, on the hand, are meeting us in the middle ground by offering various promotions via pm.
That’s how I’ve always understood it — it’s not a lower limit for the selling price.
The manufacturer isn’t setting the bar for the price that you might pay — you can walk in the door and ask for a better price.
put pressure on businesses to charge their recommended retail price or any other set price, for example by threatening to stop supplying to the reseller
stop resellers from advertising, displaying or selling goods from the supplier below a specified price.
It is also illegal for resellers to ask their suppliers to use recommended price lists to stop competitors from discounting. In most cases, a supplier may specify a maximum price for retail.
Call me what you may. I could give a rat's tooshie. What I am is not what you call a shill but a businessman.... Which based on your posts of late that is one thing that you cannot and thankfully do not lay claim to. There is a big difference between explaining how something works vs defending something. You can stay in the cheese line all you like and complain that they only gave one block instead of two. I do not believe in entitlement and certainly do believe that anything is free. Moreover, there is proof in my methods of practice.
Exactly. It is not all bad. Too many people believe that it is for manufacturers to charge more when in reality it is not. Just think about it...if we lost every single local dealer then all lights would end up having to get ordered in from China and everyone would have to wait weeks to get theirs. There are people that will pay twice as much as us to get what they want immediately.
When the deals get so loud that they start popping up on search engines then yeah..they will shut them down. For the most part WE do not have to worry about it.