Glen,
It will be interesting for you and me to see what happens with the consolidation, for the dealers it will not. You know that.
There is no date for consolidation, so you will have to figure it out as some die, lose support, don't update the system, etc. Look at CDM Data, when was that system updated? There are dealers still using that system because nobody came to tell them there better systems available.
CarGuy2011,
The fact that you can change a bad price because you bought the car wrong at the auction or you spent too much money on recon and Homenet allows to push it faster to ATC would be a game changer of customers would spend 5 minutes researching and making a decision and/or if Autotrader was the only place customers would go to find cars.
Since in the real world customers go to 6-8 sites the price being updated just a little bit faster on Autotrader will make no difference at all. It may entice someone IF Autotarder is their last shopping spot (but not if it is the first, or just he second), and it will not change their decision if the price change is just a hundred bucks or so.
The biggest game changer is to know the car biz and your market. To understand your customers so you buy the right cars at the auction. To have a good relationship with your recon people so cars look and feel good and you don't put too much money on them.
Customers take 90 days to decode to buy a car, we thing updating the price every 2 seconds will make a difference. We got sold... big time.
