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Carmax back on the bandwagon

from this Automotive News Article said:
Dave Zuchowski, CEO of Hyundai Motor America, said dealers should be careful about letting online sites get between them and their customers.
"It's like buying the rope you're hanging yourself with," he said in Chicago last week at Automotive News' Best Dealerships To Work For event.


The industry has not provided enough answers to questions the consumer develops during their research phase. This is one of the largest reasons why the third party sites remain strong. I agree with Zuchowski and wish we could do more to make third parties more individualistic than corporate.

In the meantime, it sure would be interesting to know which markets that 40% of Carmax is jumping back into Cars.com and Autotrader on.

 
In the meantime, it sure would be interesting to know which markets that 40% of Carmax is jumping back into Cars.com and Autotrader on.

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I would suspect it could be in markets where they need market share penetration? I'm not seeing them back on those sites here in the Richmond VA market yet. There may not be a need here though. When I used to get the Cross Sell report each month there was one number you could count on each month. The 2 local Carmax stores were going to have a minimum of 10% of the market for used car sales. I've seen it as high as 12%.
 
I would suspect it could be in markets where they need market share penetration? I'm not seeing them back on those sites here in the Richmond VA market yet. There may not be a need here though. When I used to get the Cross Sell report each month there was one number you could count on each month. The 2 local Carmax stores were going to have a minimum of 10% of the market for used car sales. I've seen it as high as 12%.

Have their numbers changed in your area at all during their 16-month hiatus?
 
The industry has not provided enough answers to questions the consumer develops during their research phase. This is one of the largest reasons why the third party sites remain strong. I agree with Zuchowski and wish we could do more to make third parties more individualistic than corporate.

In the meantime, it sure would be interesting to know which markets that 40% of Carmax is jumping back into Cars.com and Autotrader on.

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I'm not so sold on it being the lack of a dealer's ability to hit all the right research benchmarks as much as the third parties taking up all of page one.
 
I'm not so sold on it being the lack of a dealer's ability to hit all the right research benchmarks as much as the third parties taking up all of page one.

Allow me to clarify things better Jessica as I was referring to the industry, not the dealer specifically. We have an industry-wide issue of unstandardized data that limits the kind of tooling a customer would like to see. And Jessica, there is an appreciable amount of shoppers who begin their research with the dealer in mind. Many start that search with "I love my sales agent, what cars is he selling now" or "I have bought every car from ABC motors - what do they have to offer" and after they've seen what's available they, then, do their research. That is one example, but I can assure you page one results full of third parties don't factor as much as they're thought to.