How much time and resources does it take you and your sales team to have to enter new inventory on your own website alongside all these partner marketplaces? And when working with multiple marketplaces, how much time does it take to make sure your inventory pricing is aligned across all of them when you make a markdown on certain inventory? I'm curious how much of a pain point this is, particularly with larger dealerships (or any dealership with a high ratio of cars:team members)
Cargurus, Autotrader, Cars.com, and CarFax - How much effort?
- Thread starter MK.45
- Start date
- May 1, 2006
- 3,732
- 2,702
- Awards
- 13
- First Name
- Alex
With the right inventory management software if should be a single entry and then everything is fed to all the places you show your inventory. Tools like vAuto and HomeNet can do this. Some website providers can do it too.
Where I hear more experienced dealers spending extra time is in the TrueCar portal making TrueCar-only-adjustments because of the nature of that program.
Where I hear more experienced dealers spending extra time is in the TrueCar portal making TrueCar-only-adjustments because of the nature of that program.
If you're looking for pain points in the automotive industry, I would look almost anywhere but here.
Inventory syndication has been done countless times and most of the players already work together - I would argue that any disruption that was going to happen already did.
Not to derail this - but I keep asking myself this question: What exactly is TrueCar's value proposition to either the dealer or the customer in 2020 / 2021? The "dealer is evil" shtick is played out, and the pricing transparency revolution has been around for a while.
- May 1, 2006
- 3,732
- 2,702
- Awards
- 13
- First Name
- Alex
For dealers in military towns it was an imperative lead source because of USAA. And there are other marketplace-specific niches it serves as well. The model does entice dealers to be more aggressive with pricing for TrueCar customers and that is the part I never understood.
I'm with you Rob…
USAA’s gone - none of the other niches are anywhere near big enough to stand out, at least in my market.For dealers in military towns it was an imperative lead source because of USAA. And there are other marketplace-specific niches it serves as well. The model does entice dealers to be more aggressive with pricing for TrueCar customers and that is the part I never understood.
I'm with you Rob…
We’ve always been super aggressive with pricing for *all* customers - the idea of even deeper / special / secret discounts for USAA / Truecar customers has always seemed silly.
- Apr 13, 2012
- 216
- 178
- Awards
- 6
- First Name
- George
Good thread, been immersing back into inventory mgt for a few large customers. Deficiencies I still find:
1. Image sizes are not optimized or maximized. In some cases high res photos are excessively dumbed down, or massive files are used for thumbnails, killing SRP and homepage load times.
2. Trim levels and premium options get strippped so 3rd party indicates “Fair deal” vs. “Great deal”. CarGurus lead offender.
3. Daily batch updates vs real time syndication, editing.
4. Automated, dynamic photo overlays that indicate premium option featured, i.e. Overlay indicates heated mirrors when showing image of heated mirror button.
1. Image sizes are not optimized or maximized. In some cases high res photos are excessively dumbed down, or massive files are used for thumbnails, killing SRP and homepage load times.
2. Trim levels and premium options get strippped so 3rd party indicates “Fair deal” vs. “Great deal”. CarGurus lead offender.
3. Daily batch updates vs real time syndication, editing.
4. Automated, dynamic photo overlays that indicate premium option featured, i.e. Overlay indicates heated mirrors when showing image of heated mirror button.
Mustafa, I see that you are a vendor that just joined the Refresh forum. What was the context for your question?
- Aug 8, 2019
- 13
- 8
- Awards
- 2
- First Name
- Tony
An industry wide VIN decoder would be a major value add in my opinion. In addition to what @georgenenni mentioned above, it is becoming a full time job to check all of the right boxes to to make sure we've got the right book values on the different guides in order to build value in our pricing to our customers, generate accurate vehicle descriptions, submit bookout sheets to the banks, etc. and that is with us using vAuto as our inventory source. I know it would be a big hill to climb, but with all the tech out there today I would think it would be possible for someone to figure out.
