I've read very few of the posts on this thread as I have some opinions based on my years of experience in retail as it relates to what I see in our hobby. MAP pricing is something vendors in lots of industries introduced to protect pricing in local markets from threats online and in those "big box" stores that were so popular to open in the 90's and to protect the image of their boutique products. It's the reason Callaway golf clubs sell for the same price all over. Well, that's great. All the places that you can buy premium equipment sell it for the same price, so it doesn't matter who you buy it from, right? What does that mean to an LFS or BRS or whoever? It means that the customer receives no perceived advantage from shopping at one place over another, so things like shipping, shipping time, sales tax, and customer service come into play. When I call an online retailer with a problem or defect, 9 times out of 10, there is a replacement/fix on the way before I can even pack up the defective merchandise. This is the result of brisk competition. Taking it back to the store is going to be a process no matter who you are dealing with and depending on the person at the counter, you may not be able to get help at all and left to figure out how to contact a manufacturer that may even be in another country yourself. In addition, pricing on items not sold by those specific vendors with the HOT boutique equipment becomes a battleground where companies like "Amazon" are able to beat up on brick and mortar. Those issues aside, the greatest 'challenge' MAP pricing creates occurs when an under the radar account or wholesale account offers discounts that would likely get a normal account in hot water with the vendor. That creates a perception that the retailer following those rules may be sticking it to the buyer. That perception is not helped when local stores bump up livestock prices to cover the margins they aren't making on hard goods because they are being sold elsewhere at lower prices. Therefore, because customers believe (accurately or not) that pricing isn't totally on the up and up, they shop around; and try lower end equipment (like the entire aquarium aisle at almost all chain pet stores), and knockoffs, and used equipment, and all the other things that anyone who has ever just wandered by the aquarium section to "see if they have anything decent" at one of those big stores can identify with.
What's the solution? How many times have you dropped a hundred or three on a product that was of less than good quality? O rings that don't seal, pumps that don't pump, skimmers that don't skim, heaters that are neither accurate or reliable, the list goes on and on. Why is it too much to ask stores and vendors to provide quality at a decent price from the fish store we would all rather shop at anyway? What's better, a 25% margin on a guy that spends 5000 a year in your store, or a 40% margin on the livestock you sold him, the emergency heater he HAD to have that miunte, and the few knick-knacks that totaled up to 1500. OK, multiply that by 1000 customers and figure in the losses that are being taken daily on merchandise that sits and sits and sits on the shelves that could be turning over 3 times as quickly. TOO MANY small retailers are looking for a quick score on a purchase and think nothing of the bad taste in customers mouth the VERY FIRST TIME they realize they may have gotten hosed (doesn't matter if it's a 10 dollar item or one that costs 1000). At that point the seller has guaranteed that the customer will shop around with regard to every transaction from that moment forward(even impulse item sales suffer because they want to check prices elsewhere and then don't buy at all). As a boutique retail industry, it would behoove the folks that run it to strive to provide VALUE to their customers at each and every transaction. Nobody wants to buy something for more than it's worth or something that doesn't work. These products are so specialized that LOTS and LOTS of stores got away with outmoded business models and shady dealings for way longer than they were able to in other retail areas. Prohibitivley high pricing on items that are produced for lower relative manufacturing will create conditions favorable to a black market in counterfeit merchandise as well as the less neferious lower quality alternative market no matter what industry you're considering. All I got.
