Brand Protection: Monitor Map Policies To Avoid Brand Degradation

By Author: Alice Coope
Total Articles: 213
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The technology enabled e-commerce market has exploded over the last few years and is one of the beneficial methods of marketing both for the small and medium business enterprises as well as the large conglomerates and industry giants. With little investment, these enterprises can avail the benefits of enterprise growth, expansion of customer base and growth of revenue. For the larger business houses, e-commerce market gives them additional presence for both B2B and B2C sales. However, irrespective of the type of business, e-commerce also brings with it greater threat of grey market sales.

The sales through grey markets are damaging to organization as whole and manufacturers in particular as the products that enter the grey market are mostly obsolete versions or unsold products that would not find a market otherwise. The unauthorized dealers who get a loophole through authorized channels try to push out the grey market products at a lower price. The price difference thus affects not just the sales of new products ...
... through both the e-commerce market and the physical stores, but also affects the brand reputation.

However, innovations in technology have helped service providers to design and develop reliable solutions for online fraud detection and brand protection. This online fraud detection software facilitates identification of frauds by monitoring the B2B sites, auction sites and grey market sales. Regular monitoring helps to detect any frauds and trademark violations and paves way for enterprises to take measures to counteract grey market sales, recapture the lost market and regain revenues as well as brand reputation.

Moreover, e-commerce led growth of online retail sales tends to have a complex effect with the downward pressure on advertised prices. Brands stand to lose millions of dollars when the online sales channels push advertised prices lower. The development of the Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policies demand that e-stores with a MAP policy concerning the manufactures product line follow strict regulations of pricing on the websites, thus preventing retailers from advertising below the minimum advertised price of any product. However, faced with aggressive competition, offering economical pricing for products will ensure higher sales and revenue. Thus, dealers who sell the products without MAP pricing tend to have a larger customer base.

To combat such brand protection issues, leading service providers make use of sophisticated search engines and web mining technologies for real-time monitoring of online sales channels for their buy and sell listings. Such technological innovations facilitate manufacturers to track and trace fraudsters, grey market dealing of inappropriate discounts and pave way for organizations to avoid any profit degradation.

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