If ever there were a trivia night having to do with MAP/UPP pricing terminology or obscure seller names found on sites like Amazon or eBay, you would want me on your team. That’s because, as product manager for Lookout, gap intelligence’s new MAP/UPP enforcement service, I live and breathe those issues every day. Providing Great Freakin’ Data (GFD) to our clients is core to every service that gap intelligence offers. For Lookout, producing GFD includes a few special elements.
Take it One Website at a Time
Every manufacturer confronting MAP/UPP enforcement has a list of websites and products that they need monitored on a daily basis. When enlisting the help of the Lookout team, manufacturers can rest assured that their product and price list will be checked in its entirety every day. Our method is a signature blend of proprietary e-commerce software combined with human expertise that completes the checklist in full, going site by site, product by product. This process imparts several benefits to the client.
First off, website issues that can affect the quality and consistency of Lookout data (maintenance, redesign, etc.) are discovered and corrected within hours of it happening. As MAP/UPP data is date and time sensitive, catching a problem a week later provides no benefit to the client. Secondly, we become experts on these sites and we know what to watch out for (insert Lookout pun here). If a site displays products in a certain way or uses tricky pricing language, you can bet that we know about it and have found ways to accurately capture it.
Try Line Fishing, not Net Fishing
Combined with our site by site approach, the process we use to clean up our daily data, results in what our CEO Gary likes to call “craft data”. Craft data is the opposite of a data dump. It’s delivering exactly what is wanted by the client so that they don’t spend hours sorting through noise or false positives. I like to think of it as line fishing versus net fishing. Fishing with a net drags in all kinds of unwanted species and can be harmful for the environment. Line fishing, on the other hand, sustainably provides what is wanted while minimizing negative externalities.
The MAP/UPP pricing world can be complicated. What determines a price violation can include considerations such as whether or not a product is in-stock, or if the item is an in-store exclusive, contains promotional language, or is part of a bundled offering. With these situations appearing hundreds of times per day, you want someone who is fishing with a line so that you don’t have to sift through the net.
Be a True Compliance Partner
Another important part of our MAP/UPP enforcement service is acting as a true partner for our clients. That idea can even be seen in the name of our service. Keeping a lookout, or being a lookout, can evoke images of gathering intelligence to help warn against impending threats or danger. While helping our clients preserve brand equity and price integrity may not be as dramatic as other types of dangers in life, we see ourselves as true partners who will not hesitate to complete a special project or bring something to our clients’ attention if it means helping them avoid the consequences of low pricing. Most importantly, being a true compliance partner means that we are accessible. If a client has a question or a concern about a MAP/UPP issue, they know that a member of the Lookout team is just a phone call away.
Curious about Lookout? Check out some of our great results.
If you are someone who monitors online marketplaces and your pricing and brand equity, please give us a call at 619.574.1100 or write us at info@gapintelligence.com to learn more.
