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Online Shopping to Online Buying

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#281
For those creative souls looking for insights into webrooming's* impact into ecommerce, the Best Buy (BBY) leadership story can give us insights into automotive retailing.

Best Buy Stock Jumps On Q2 Earnings Beat As Same-Store Sales Rise
http://www.investors.com/news/techn...umps-on-q2-earnings-beat-comp-sales-increase/

The BBY leadership story is nothing short of amazing. They knew they were about to become BlockBuster, or, Radio Shack. Using my decades of building retail stores, I've watched BBY leaders make a big ass bet to re-invent their sales floors (both ppl and merchandising displays) Rather than fight shoppers with smartphones, they embraced them. It was Leadership's goal to swing showrooming into webrooming... and it worked!

Best Buy has be-backs!
Just like HD and Lowes is embracing buy online, pick up in store, the Best Buy showroom experience tees up BestBuy ecommerce.

kudos to BBY leadership and shareholders! BRICKS and CLICKS IS ALIVE AND WELL! (This bodes well for car dealers :)

HTH
-Uncle Joe

*showrooming & webrooming is an ideal shopping experience for select products, products that are:
  • complex,
  • are totally new,
  • are expensive,
  • have buyer risk,
  • are best examined in person (see, touch, smell, etc)
  • can't be shipped via UPS.
 
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#282
This is an awesome DR thread, it's a rich research resource. It's time for Uncle Joe to pound the table again.

As the Digital Retailing car market matures, eComerce only retailers (like Carvana) will discover that the growth of "established sales territories" will have plateaued and their growth comes from opening new areas. eComerce only retailers (like Carvana) will need to experiment with ways to increase sales (and margins) in established territories.

One way is to advertise thru traditional broadcast media. Advertising will add costs of $300-$500 per vehicle retailed.

Another way is to increase the yield from it's existing site traffic. If I were Carvana leadership, I'd pick one location and hold an 'open house'. I'd invite shoppers in to see, touch and smell the inventory. My instincts are telling me that it's entirely possible that this 'open house' event could 'shake the tree' and produce 2 waves of sales. #1) Open House Sales. #2) Be-back sales. I'd expect the results to be eye opening and worthy of further experimentation.



JoePistell said:
  1. Webrooming is Carvana's greatest threat (Carvana and their ecommerce only peers). We'll see if Carvana morph's it's "hidden inventory" model to bring in Webroom'ers.
Webrooming is the best internet shopping experience. period.
Click to expand...
 
#285
I'd like to throw my two cents in here for fun, with the obvious disclaimer of In My Opinion...

I believe there is a monumental miss here, and by here I dont just mean this thread- I am referring more so to this entire concept of automotive technology evolving to the point where retail transactions online super ceed brick and mortar. This is my take, and please bear in mind- technology is near and dear to my heart, as is the car business, and I have been navigating professionally in both circles for a decade now. The huge miss that I see from the technological side, ie the carvana's of the world, is just how unique, complex and regulated a single automotive transaction is. Better phrased this way perhaps...name another industry where Joe Blow in Indiana is better off financing, rolling negative equity and taxes for his new Accord while Jane Doe in Miami is better off leasing, paying the tax upfront (florida tax calculated monthly) and doesnt stroking a check for the negative. This is of course a generalized and exaggerated example meant to demonstrate how different every transaction, state, county, person, car, need, want and desire is- there are very few industries like this one...where the same product requires so much HUMAN attention in order to A, identify whats best for a client and B, hold their hand and walk them through it. If Joe in Indiana and Jane and Miami wish to buy a pack of pencils on Amazon, it doesn't really matter how the pack arrives or how its paid for.

Infographs are charts are nice and anyone who thinks technology will elude the automotive world, while somehow disrupting every other world, is delusional- my stance remains the same....technological evolution as it pertains to the automotive business is tailor made for the research, education and convenience aspect of this industry and in this regard, we would be wise to embrace it. The days of smoking cigs, hoarding information and demanding a customer show up to our door before they know the price are winding down. However, the backbone of the business remains and that backbone is, was and forever will be summed up with this statement....technology doesn't sell cars, people sell cars. As an industry, we would be wise to embrace the grease that technology provides and leverage it into providing the personalized experience that the world wants. Again, just my .02.

P.S. Please excuse typo's, no time to spellcheck...I got cars to sell on a saturday woooooo :)
 
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#286
I love reading this forum for pretty much one man's opinion, thanks Uncle Joe.

I find that i typically agree with your insights and opinions, and i admire the manner in which you attempt to educate the unwashed masses (Craigh).

I agree that Automotive retailing will be a multichannel sales model. As glh222 pointed out there are going to be customers that simply are unable to establish what is best for them, and on the other end of the spectrum there will be customers that are way more able than the retailer to establish what is right for them.

For any solution to succeed, it will need to recognize that the dealership must be included in the sales process, but also will need to recognize that it has to provide an adequate amount of transparency and information to the consumer in order to foster adoption.
 
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