If you have any interest at all in understanding the marine electronics market, I strongly suggest you read today’s post by Peter James over on Ask JackRabbit:

New MAP Policy from Raymarine

Many electronics companies, including Raymarine, set MAP prices for their products. This is the Minimum Advertised Price, which is the lowest price that a dealer is allowed to use in advertising the product or listing it on a website. The dealer can sell the product at any price at all - he just can’t advertise it for under MAP.

 

The MAP price for an E120, for example, is $3899 (list price is $4600). Most dealers who sell online use a variant on the technique shown above from the Consumers Marine website. They show the MAP price, and invite the reader to click to see the actual selling price (at JackRabbit, you see the actual selling price when you add the product to your shopping cart). Clicking at Consumers Marine opens a pop-up window that shows the actual selling price. The MAP limitation applies only to dealers. Anyone with a web store can open an account with a wholesaler, buy an E120 at dealer price, and advertise it for any price at all. So this attempt to set a floor on pricing ends up penalizing dealers - who are undercut on advertised prices by the scruffy-guy-in-his-pajamas web stores.

Raymarine has decided to get tough.

Click here to read the rest of the story…