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Friedman Swift Associates?

joe.webb

UrRefresher
Aug 5, 2010
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Joesph
Has anyone ever heard of a company by the name of Friedman-Swift Associates? Apparently they are (one of the many) "market research" companies that come into dealerships, capture their customer data, and tell them what their basic advertising structure should be.
They are visiting one of my dealers that loves hearing about all new products, and this is a problem. Friedman Swift ask that all decision makers be present at their visit (how convenient) and that the dealer must decide on the spot or not get to take advantage of their services.
When I was young, my wife and I fell for this after a great pitch from a discount furniture order-from-catalog warehouse. It obviously seems like a scheme, but their website makes they sound relatively legit.
Anyone heard anything? A keen insight into this "service" would be appreciated.
 
Joe, it was a very long time ago but the Ford dealership that I worked for many years ago worked with them. Our dealer came back from a NADA 20 Group meeting where he learned of them and decided to give them a try. This was in the mid 90's. They basically did a demographic study of our client base, pulled some Polk data to predict in market car buyers, and developed a direct mail campaign for those customers. Having been that long ago I cannot remember if the results were positive or not. I do remember that we thought it was great having access to all of that data, but remember this was almost 20 years ago when dealers did not have access to what we do today.
 
Ah good ol' Friedman Swift...My owner was sold their market research package a couple years ago. They promised the world and delivered zilch.

Literally zilch! They took our huge down payment and ran! We tried to get our money back after six months of inactivity and got the door shut in our face.

After a two year fight we finally got our money back along with the extensive lawyer fees. It was a huge headache :mad:. Stay away from Friedman Swift!!!!!
 
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Joe, back in 1999, Friedman Swift was one of the leading researchers on Automotive Internet Retail. At the time, when I was digging for research and info a dot com marketing friend pointed me toward them. Their report was one of the most comprehensive studies at the time but I have not seen much if anything from them since which I always thought was surprising.
 
I heard the pitch a few months ago. Pitched market research and advertising sourcing. Wanted 8,000 dollars to call my customers and ask few questions about what brought them in. Rep told me he would provide results but couldn't tel me which customers said what. Huh? It's my list?!! I smelled the rat that he was... after a few more minutes of questions it became very obvious to me he was a scamer.
 
Joe, back in 1999, Friedman Swift was one of the leading researchers on Automotive Internet Retail. At the time, when I was digging for research and info a dot com marketing friend pointed me toward them. Their report was one of the most comprehensive studies at the time but I have not seen much if anything from them since which I always thought was surprising.

They are still active but produce things geared more towards OEMs and suppliers/vendors. Their industry report is a little too "50,000 foot view" to be of significant value to a single marketplace in my opinion. Unless you're looking at the full marketplace's registration data and comparing against actual competition it is tough for these kind of organizations to provide insights a dealer (a DealerRefresh dealer at least) doesn't already know.