There’s a radio advertisement that plays regularly on a sports radio station during my morning commute urging people to visit their local “Dodge/Chrysler retailer.”
The ad caught my eye, or my ear I suppose, because we have been writing a lot in these pages about the “retail revolution” dealers are facing.
The question it made me consider is whether the term “dealer” will start to be replaced with “retailer” in advertising and other communications from dealers — and from OEMs.
It’s no secret that some car buyers don’t like the notion of having to “deal” for their vehicle purchase and would rather just know the price up front and enjoy a more traditional “retail” experience with a fixed, or at least a predictable, price.
The question is about more than semantics.
Clearly, car dealers have always been retailers of vehicles — there’s nothing new about that. But as they start to apply some of the more leading- edge retail practices and technologies, and as they elevate the customer experience, their involvement is really about the entire vehicle purchase journey and ownership lifecycle.
The actual “deal” is increasingly a less significant part of the journey, particularly with the increased transparency on pricing and with the low margins on new vehicles.
So if you set aside for the moment the service you provide in drawing up deals and offers for your customers, and just consider your performance as a retailer, how is your dealership doing?
What are you like to “visit” online? How does that connect to the consistency of the experience when customers show up at your dealership?
What sets the experience your customers can expect apart from other dealers in your area — and more importantly — from other leading retailers?
Is there anything memorable about the retail experience that you can define, or that your staff can pinpoint?
If not, you have some work to do during this transition, or more like “transformation” of the auto retail experience.
I visit dealerships all the time and meet some of Canada’s leading dealers. They are more than up to the task, and will be able to adapt these new tools to better serve their customers.
Dealers will need help from their OEMs in ensuring they can provide a more consistent experience, and will need to get better at readily providing the information consumers will need on their journey — but they will get there.
You’ll also be reading a lot more about retailing trends for dealerships in our next issue when we report on a trip that Canadian auto dealer’s publisher Niel Hiscox and I took to London, England to visit some of the leading auto retailers there, including the famed Audi City downtown location, and the Hyundai Rockar store located in the largest mall in Europe in downtown London.
It was eye-opening stuff. The future of automotive retail isn’t coming — it’s already here.
