So far in this series, we’ve looked at driverless vehicles and automotive electrification. What’s next? How about I give you a hint...
An AutoTrader study in the U.S. revealed that 17 out of 4,002 people prefer the current automotive buying process.
That’s not a typo. That’s 0.4 percent and means a huge majority of people want to see substantial changes.
A similar, international study by Accenture shows 75 percent of people would prefer to do the entire transaction online.
Online shopping in Canada still only accounts for $1 out of every $10 spent, but it’s growing at a rapid clip.
When looking at these studies, I see customers longing for an online shopping platform in order to take more control over the experience. What they’re hoping for is Amazon-like simplicity.
So how did we get here?
Well, part of it is the product. Looking at something like the 2019 U.S. Initial Quality Study by J.D. Power what I see is, there’s not much difference from a quality perspective today. The brands perform between 63-130 problems per 100 vehicles. Meaning, on an individual basis, you’re likely going to encounter about one problem no matter which vehicle parks in your driveway.
The highly competitive nature of the auto industry means that just about every manufacturer offers similar systems to their competition. It even applies to third-party systems. For example, if you followed the Android/Apple mobile phone connectivity kerfuffle, even that has been resolved.
If we remove emotional buying reasons - such as “I will only ever buy F150s” or “This luxury car is as much a rolling message to the world as a means to get around it” - and most products can be reasonably expected to serve your needs, what are we left with?
Back to that shopping experience.
Automotive retail is ripe for disruption.
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