"Richard Kaplan" wrote in message
s.com...
This practice is common with lots of mail order products, especially
electronics. Look though any computer magazine and you will see "$CALL"
listed as prices for various electronic equipment.

The use of MAP was much more relevant when magazine and T-A-P ads were the
primary source of customers for the mail order houses. With published ads,
they have to be set two months or more ahead of the actual publish date. If
the "other guy" set his price $10 below yours, he got more sales. So price
setting was kind of like a game of chicken. Set it a few bucks too high and
you lose sales, set it too low and you lose profit. The end result was that
most dealers actually wanted the manufacturers to set a MAP. That way all
the ads were the same -- either the MAP or "Call". They could then adjust
their price as needed when the customers actually called.

It's not so important today with almost everyone having a web site. I guess
not having the price on the site does avoid having a quick Froogle(TM)
search point everyone to the one "cheapest" dealer. If a dealer lowers his
prices, it may not be reflected in the web searches for a week or longer, if
at all. With customers having to send an email or load a shopping cart,
they get that customer interaction and can adjust prices dynamically to make
the sale.

As I mentioned, the dealers point to the manufacturers and say it's their
MAP policy; but when I worked for one of those manufacturers, it was the
dealers that asked for the MAP policy. It was a tool that let them avoid
really steep discounting which hurt their margins.

Gerry