Cars: by 2025, one in four customers will buy online.
Britta Seeger, who heads Mercedes marketing and sits on Daimler’s board, puts it bluntly: “We expect that by 2025 a quarter of our global sales will take place online.”
Not bad for an industry that until a couple of years ago was monolithic in swearing that cars would never sell on the Internet. Digitization is changing the way we live and do business, as customers around the world expect to be able to interact online with brands anywhere, anytime.
Automakers will have to adapt to changes in consumer attitudes and behavior. If you want to communicate and reach potential customers, the channels to use are digital ones.
People, in short, have learned a new way of being consumers. There is a name for all this, and it is a word from the new economy: omnichannel.
Suzuki Smart Buy: the sales network in the days of the Coronavirus
The 4-wheel world has been hard hit by the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic. To try to get the Italian auto market moving again, manufacturers are getting resourceful and have decided to change the way they approach their customers by leveraging various digital solutions.
Suzuki has launched the“Smart Buy” program, which offers the opportunity for all users to be able to book from home and subsequently buy, on unique terms cars, motorcycles and products from the nautical world with a few simple clicks.
The new Suzuki Smart Buy program is an online reservation system, the meeting of a physical dealership and an ecommerce.
The two sales models, physical and online, are simply deferred in time: customers can browse Suzuki’s Web site at any time of the day and view the car, motorcycle, and marine products of their choice. If you are interested in purchasing, you can then register on the site and access the private area from which you can select your nearest Suzuki dealership. It will be at this physical store that the purchase will be finalized and the car, motorcycle, or outboard motor chosen online will be delivered.
Suzuki’s second initiative is #suzukiportechiusetelefoniaperti and is reserved for those who are already customers of the brand and need assistance. Suzuki dealerships provide a dedicated phone number for WhatsApp messages; through this number they can communicate directly with the person who sold us the car, motorcycle, or boat motor for information or assistance.
This is also a way to stay close to customers virtually.
Perfected online purchasing processes
The long wave of coronavirus, has affected lifestyles and ways of dealing with commerce and shopping in general.
Manufacturer Geely-also owner of Volvo and Lotus-had launched its own unprecedented sales system in February that allowed, even in a quarantine situation, online orders for various types of cars to be finalized, enabling:
- The customization of vehicle specifications,
- the financing
- online insurance
- The possibility of obtaining home delivery.
Geely Auto now announces that it has improved its ‘contactless’ delivery system, that is, one that avoids proximity between people, directly to their homes or offices. The final stage of the process, that of handing over the keys, will be carried out with drones, so as to absolutely avoid any possibility of contagion.
Since the platform was launched, 10,000 consumers have ordered and paid for a Geely car, first going through the ecommerce site and then having their orders handled by local dealers who are entrusted with the home delivery process.
As part of this, all Geely cars are thoroughly disinfected by the dealership, including through ionization, before delivery to ensure that customers have a completely safe buying experience.
It is not only the way cars are sold that has changed, taking advantage of the full potential of digital, but also the relationship with consumers and their attitudes in the face of new ways of buying cars.
This evolution in the world of car ecommerce will lead to further changes and developments.
