Minimum published pricing policy

[bzprod]

Hello,

The manufacturer of the main product that I deal with has just recently established a minimum published pricing policy. Does anyone have experience with this? They will no longer allow me to display the lower price on the website. What are some ways for me to easily show my prices without having the customer call or email?

Thanks.

God Bless,
Patrick

p.s. I apologize in advance if this is the wrong forum.

[jimbeetle]

Hi Patrick,

Had a quite long and fairly well thought out reply but sounds like it basically boils down to the manufacturer not wanting to share any of the profit.

Don't know what type of relationship you have with the manufacturer (traditional distributor, internet affiliate, etc), but would seem your hands are tied trying to sell the product on the web without publishing the price. I know you said no to e-mail but a simple autoresponder with the discounted price and a link to an order page is the best I can come up with offhand.

All at WW will have to get their 'out-of-the-box' thinking caps on.

Jim

[watercrazed]

Generally, min. pub. price rules are to protect retail channels, maintain perceived value, minimize gray market activities, and reduce price wars between retailers - maintain profit margins for all concerned.

Say I am a manufacturer/wholesaler selling to a mix of channels high-end retailers, mid range retailers, catalogs, and online merchants. Everyone has different overheads, If I have a strong high end channel, they may need a 200% markup or more to maintain operations, and they bring a level of prestige and market awareness to the product. Allowing aggressive pricing by a low end merchant with low overhead, could have a lot of negative consequents for my product line overtime.

[bzprod]

Thanks for the quick reply. The relationship is a traditional drop shipping arrangement. The products generally list at about $650-$1000. I am allowed to sell them about $75-$100 less than that. I have two main competitors. Competitor "A" does not display any prices, he just directs customers to call... and competitor "B" displays list price and then directs the user to either call the 800 number or email for best price. I want to have an edge on both of these approaches, in hopes of making the shopping experience better on my site. I know that both of these approaches work because these two competitors are the #1 and #2 sellers out of nearly 5,000 dealers worldwide.

I would like to automate this as much as possible so that I can minimize my time spent with customers on the phone and spend more time marketing online.

I was thinking of maybe creating a members only portion of the site where the customer would have to enter in their name and email to log in and view prices. I have not recieved an ok from the manufacturer.

Another option might be an autoresponder, but that would require the user to leave the site, check their email, and then return to the site.

I have also been toying with the idea of using a "live help" type of application. With this, the user will enter in their pricing question and I will reply with the price if I am online. If I am not online, maybe I can send an automated reply that says something like "...live support is not available right now, if you are ready to make a purchase, keep in mind that every product has a $75 instant rebate."

I think that something like this might do the trick. If you were a customer, would you rather create an account (email, name) and login to view the prices, or would you feel more comfortable talking with live help. Maybe allowing the customer to choose any of the above would be best.....hmmmm...

God Bless,
Patrick

p.s. Thanks for all the help!

[aaronc]

I'm not sure if this is the same situation but I believe some places only show you the price after you add it to a shopping cart.
The idea being that the person is serious about buying.

[graywolf]

Bzprod you said

I have also been toying with the idea of using a "live help" type of application. With this, the user will enter in their pricing question and I will reply with the price if I am online. If I am not online, maybe I can send an automated reply that says something like "...live support is not available right now, if you are ready to make a purchase, keep in mind that every product has a $75 instant rebate."

I have a similar situation and we experimented with this to for a while and the manufacturers still weren't happy. The only thing that worked is posting telephone number. It's not the best solution, while nobody is happy nobody is terribly unhappy either.

[Ankheg]

Maybe I'm just a sneaky SOB, but I can think of a couple ways around this:

1. Advertise for the minimum allowable price, and offer free (or heavily discounted) shipping, making the effective price lower;

2. Advertise at the minimum publishable price, but do the "instant rebate" thing that a lot of retailers use to circumvent these policies;

There are probably other possibilities, these were just the first two that came to mind.