minimum advertised price (MAP)

[natophonic]

some manufacturers have a "minimum advertised price" (MAP) policy that stipulates the lowest price a dealer or retailer can advertise to the general public, without a customer in some way directly asking the retailer for a quote of the "best price" for a particular product. you'll see this in newspaper/radio/tv ads where the retailer says to call or ask a sales rep for the price. on websites, you'll see it handled various ways, but it boils down to the user having to add the product to their shopping cart to see the minimum price, having to enter their email address to be sent a message with the price quote, or both. for example:

 

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh2/controlle...lers&sku=262062

 

this is a "must have" requirement for the store that i'm in the process of building. i'm just starting with the 2.2ms2 codebase, but i'm not very experienced with PHP (i have mostly done perl/mod_perl, C++, and java coding in the past), and i'm trying not to reinvent a wheel. i've searched the forums and contributions, and saw people asking the same question, but not getting any easy "oh, use this contribution..." answer. so mainly i'm trying to see if anyone is building (or has built) a similar thing, or at least what other people's needs and requirements might be should i attempt to code such a thing myself.

 

so far, i see it as

 

1) changes to the mysql schema (either additional columns to the product table, or a new products_map table, as well as additional columns to the manufacturers table).

 

2) changes to the admin application to allow for

a) setting the MAP on a per-product basis

B) setting the MAP policy on a per-manufacturer basis (add-to-cart, click-to-email-quote, or either).

c) setting application-global messages for add-to-cart and click-to-email (e.g., "click here to see our too low to advertise price!")

 

3) changes to the catalog application to

a) where MAP != null, display MAP, not product.products_price

B) display links/messages per manufacturer's MAP policy

 

anything i'm missing, misstating, or overcomplicating? ;)

 

thanks for your input!

[cgchris99]

I could use this feature as well.

[Guest]

Hate to say this again but this can be done using something similar to hidden products or per item shipping - using same concept - add field to products or manufacturers table called product_map or whatever, in product description area - have spot to turn map on, then another spot to set map value - then you could do something like if map value >0 then replace buynow button or price with "e-mail us for special low price" or whatever.

Or you could set so that products with a map get sent in a separate e-mail to store owner - like a price inquiry.

[Guest]

I've created a contribution to work around this problem. If you install the contribution, you will have a field in your product entry/update form for "Product's MAP. If the selling price is below the MAP, the price is hidden. In its place is a link that says "Click For Price," which takes the customer to an automatic price quote screen. The customer fills in their name and email address and a price quote is instantly emailed to them. This satisfies my MAP restrictions, hopefully it will help yours.

 

You can find the contribution here:

Click For Price

 

and the support thread is here:

Click For Price support thread