Minimum advertised price governs the price a reseller displays in public, not the price a buyer finally pays, and that distinction carries most of the legal weight. Enforcing it without a standing legal bill is three routine tasks: monitor on a fixed schedule, record breaches in a fixed evidence format, and apply the same consequence every time, in writing. Pay a lawyer once, for the policy text and the country check, then run the process yourself.
This is a description of practice, not legal advice. The law differs sharply between the United States and the EU or the UK, and that difference is where the expensive mistakes happen.
MAP, RRP and price floor are three different things
- Minimum advertised price: the lowest price a reseller may display in public, including on their own product page and in paid ads. The transaction price may be lower, in the basket or behind a login, if the policy allows it.
- Recommended retail price, also RRP or UVP: a suggestion. It must remain a suggestion in fact as well as in name.
- Price floor, or minimum resale price: a binding limit on the price at which the reseller may actually sell. This is the one treated as a hardcore restriction in the EU and the UK.
- Maximum resale price: a cap. Treated more permissively than a floor, until it functions as a fixed price.
People use these terms interchangeably in meetings and then write one of them into a contract. Decide which you mean before drafting.
What is permitted where you sell
In the EU and the UK, fixing a minimum resale price is a hardcore restriction under the vertical agreements rules. Recommended and maximum prices are allowed, but only while they stay recommendations. Threats, delisting for price, withheld rebates or withheld stock can convert a recommendation into resale price maintenance in practice, and the regulator looks at practice.
In the United States, minimum resale price agreements have been assessed under the rule of reason at federal level since the Leegin decision in 2007, but individual state laws are stricter and vary. MAP policies are usually written as unilateral policies precisely because a policy is not an agreement.
The practical consequence: a policy that works in Ohio can be an infringement in Germany. If you sell in both, you need two documents and two processes, not one translated one. This is the single point where the lawyer is worth the money.
Why the policy is announced and never negotiated
The legal risk sits in agreement, not in announcement. So you announce your policy, identically, to everybody, and you stop there. The usual failure is not a badly drafted document, it is a salesperson agreeing something on a call to keep an account happy.
- Do not ask a reseller to confirm that they will comply. A confirmation is evidence of an agreement.
- Do not negotiate account-by-account exceptions. An exception is also evidence of an agreement.
- Do not ask one reseller about another reseller's prices, and do not pass on complaints with the complainant named.
- Do not discuss the reseller's future pricing at all. State yours, and end the conversation.
- Keep the announcement wording identical for every account, and keep proof of when each account received it.
Detection: what to monitor and how often
- Every channel, not only the reseller's own shop: marketplaces, comparison sites, paid search ads, closed member areas you have access to, and cached listings.
- A frequency tied to how fast the category reprices. Weekly checks in a category that reprices daily means most breaches start and end unseen.
- Delivered price as well as displayed price. A listing at the floor with free next-day delivery undercuts in economic terms even where your policy text allows it. Decide which one you enforce and say so.
- Strikethrough prices, was-prices, coupon banners, basket-level discounts and bundle prices, since those are the standard routes around a display rule.
- Seller identity on marketplaces, recorded every time. Account names change more often than the people behind them.
Monitoring has to be boring and automatic. Checks that run when somebody remembers produce evidence a reseller can argue with, and inconsistent enforcement is the first thing they will point at.
Evidence that survives an argument
- Full URL, including the seller or offer identifier.
- Timestamp with time zone.
- Full-page screenshot showing price, product identifier and seller name in one image.
- Displayed price, currency, whether tax is included, and the delivery cost as quoted.
- Product identifier: manufacturer part number, GTIN or EAN, never only the listing title.
- Stock status and quantity available where the page shows it.
- Which version of your policy was in force on that date.
Two of these get skipped and then missed. A screenshot without the seller name is useless when the reseller says it was somebody else. A title without a part number is useless when they say it was a different variant.
An escalation ladder that does not need a courtroom
Write the ladder down before the first breach and apply it in the same order every time. Step one is a factual notice: listing, date, price observed, policy in force, no accusation and no request for a reply. Step two is a commercial consequence you have already published. Step three is supply.
Be careful about which step you are allowed to take. In the EU and the UK, applying commercial pressure to enforce a price is close to the infringement itself, so a ladder that ends in withheld rebates or delisting needs legal review before it is used there. In the United States, a unilateral policy with a published consequence is the ordinary approach.
For sellers you cannot identify on a marketplace, buy the product. The invoice, return address, lot code or serial number usually leads back to one of your own accounts. A test purchase costs less than an hour of legal time.
When a price floor is the wrong tool
Track the breach rate as breaching listings divided by monitored listings, per week, per channel. If it stays high after two rounds of notices, the problem is not compliance. Either the floor is set above what the channel can support, or the channel is carrying more stock than it can sell at that price.
The fixes are structural rather than legal: channel-specific pack sizes or model numbers, tighter allocation, fewer distributors, or a rebate structure that stops funding the discount you are then policing. A floor works when a small minority breach it. It is not a substitute for a channel design that no longer fits the volume.