Map policy
MAP vs MSRP: What's the Difference?
MSRP is the price a manufacturer suggests; MAP is the lowest price a reseller may advertise. They are different numbers with different jobs, and a monitoring program that confuses them measures the wrong thing.
Two prices appear on almost every product a manufacturer ships through resellers, and they are confused constantly — by retailers, by marketplaces, and occasionally by the people writing the policies. The manufacturer's suggested retail price, MSRP, is a suggestion. The minimum advertised price, MAP, is a floor on what may be advertised. One is guidance; the other is a rule. Only one of them is monitored and enforced.
MSRP: the suggested price
The manufacturer's suggested retail price — sometimes "list price" or "RRP" outside the United States — is the price the brand recommends a retailer sell at. It anchors the customer's sense of value, it gives retailers a common reference for their own pricing, and it is the number from which discounts are visibly calculated ("was $199, now $149").
It is a suggestion in the plain sense. A retailer may sell above it, at it, or below it. A brand that wanted to require resellers to sell at a given price would be doing something different from setting an advertised floor — resale price maintenance, whose treatment varies by jurisdiction — and most brands keep the two apart deliberately, with advice.
MAP: the advertising floor
A MAP policy states the lowest price at which a reseller may advertise the product. It does not set the selling price and it does not set a ceiling; it draws a line under the price that may be shown. A retailer may advertise at MAP, above MAP, or at MSRP; advertising below MAP without an approved promotion is what the policy is written to catch.
MAP is typically set below MSRP. The gap between them is the room a retailer has to discount visibly while staying inside the policy. A product with an MSRP of $199.00 and a MAP of $149.00 may be advertised anywhere from $149.00 upward.
The distinction from selling price matters in practice. A reseller may reveal a lower price only in the cart, or sell lower at the checkout, without having advertised below MAP — whether the policy addresses those tactics is a question for the policy's own text. Our explainer on what a MAP policy is goes into the components a policy needs.
Side by side
| MSRP | MAP | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The price the manufacturer suggests | The lowest price a reseller may advertise |
| Effect on the reseller | None — a recommendation | A floor the brand applies; how a reseller is bound, if at all, depends on the jurisdiction and how the program is structured |
| Direction | A reference point, not a bound | A floor |
| Applies to | The selling price the retailer chooses | The advertised price the retailer shows |
| Typical relationship | Higher | Lower than MSRP, above cost |
| Monitored? | Rarely — there is nothing to enforce | Yes — this is what MAP monitoring measures |
| Shown to customers | Often, as a strike-through reference | Usually not; the customer sees the advertised price |
Which one a brand monitors
MAP. There is nothing to enforce about MSRP: a retailer selling below the suggested price has done exactly what a suggestion permits. A MAP program watches advertised prices and compares each with the floor that applied on the day.
This has a consequence for how a brand loads its catalog into a monitoring tool. The reference price the tool needs per product is the MAP, in the currency of the marketplace, with the date it took effect — not the MSRP, and not the price the brand itself sells at. A catalog imported with MSRP in the MAP column will report every reseller as below policy, and a program that starts by contacting every reseller about a number that was never a floor has a hard first month.
In MapProtector, a product carries a MAP amount and the policy that governs it carries versions with effective dates; the MSRP is not a field the product asks for, because nothing in the workflow measures against it. See Create a MAP policy.
Where the two interact
They are separate numbers, but a few situations bring them together.
Discount display. Amazon and other marketplaces frequently show a struck-through reference price beside the offer. Where that reference is the MSRP and the offer is at or above MAP, nothing is wrong. Where the offer itself is below MAP, the reference price is irrelevant: the advertised price is what is measured.
Promotions. When a brand runs a sale, it commonly lowers the MAP for a window rather than the MSRP. The suggested price stays as the anchor; the advertising floor drops so retailers can show the sale price. A monitoring tool needs to know about the window, or every participating retailer becomes a false finding. See How Promotions and Exceptions Affect MAP Monitoring.
Tolerance. Some brands allow advertised prices a small amount below MAP — a few cents of rounding, a fraction of a percent — before treating an offer as below policy. This is a property of the MAP policy, not of the MSRP, and it should be written into the policy and configured in the tool identically.
A note on terminology
Because the two are confused so often, a MAP program benefits from using the words precisely and consistently: MSRP for the suggested price, MAP or the floor for the advertised minimum, observed price for what a listing actually showed, and below policy for an observed price under the floor after tolerance and the treatment rules. The MAP Compliance Operations Glossary collects the vocabulary a program needs in one place.