price maintenance

price maintenance, measures taken by manufacturers or distributors to control the resale prices of their products charged by resellers. The practice is more effective in retail sales than at other levels of marketing. Only a few types of goods have come under such controls, the leading examples being drugs and pharmaceuticals, books, photographic supplies, liquors, miscellaneous household appliances, and various specialty goods.

The initial movement for resale price maintenance in the 1880s reflected the success of brand promotion and the resulting increase in competition among retailers. American manufacturers were granted more specific authority than was the case in other parts of the world; the so-called nonsigners’ clause in state fair-trade laws made the contractual prices agreed upon between a manufacturer and contracting dealers binding upon all resellers. (See fair-trade law.)

Resale price maintenance as a business practice was weakened during the post-World War II years. It was prohibited in both Canada and Sweden and strongly attacked in France. Of the 44 states in the United States that had fair-trade laws with effective nonsigner provisions during the 1930s, fewer than half still retained those laws 30 years later, and in 1975 fair-trade laws were repealed altogether by an act of Congress. In Great Britain, a governmental committee recommended strongly against collective sanctions and enforcement of resale price maintenance agreements, in sharp contrast to earlier governmental investigations of the subject. In 1956 Great Britain enacted the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, and in 1964 resale price maintenance was made illegal by an act of Parliament, excepting a few products, such as books.

Resale price maintenance by manufacturers was weakened when large-scale retailing, together with the growth of strong dealer organizations, set up conflicting interests within the retailing field. Because marketing channels in highly industrialized countries are complex and overlapping, the establishment and enforcement of a single price or even a minimum price by manufacturers is a complicated and burdensome task in the absence of collective enforcement efforts, limitation of numbers of enterprises, or governmental intervention. Because effective resale price controls attract excessive capital and manpower into distribution activities by eliminating price competition, such a program logically requires some means of restricting the numbers of enterprises.

Although fair-trade laws prevent well-known brands from being used as “bait” to attract customers to buy other brands pushed by distributors, it is generally agreed that resale price maintenance or “fair trade” is not a true solution to problems arising out of trade conflicts or unfair and deceptive selling practices.