My 1st pass at TrueCar's cause for poor conversion rates and possibly insight into why car dealers are up in arms.
This analysis is quite revealing. Here's their pitch, step by step.
If I am correct, this is where and why the TrueCar product vision didn't fit the shopper's vision of the product.
Let's walk through the TrueCar message to the car shopper, step by step.
The TrueCar app says...
Question: WHAT DO YOU THINK THE SHOPPER WILL DO NEXT?
TrueCar says:
I have no proof what happens next, but, my 10yrs in the dealerships tells me that the shopper does not use the product to discover a dealer, they use the TrueCar product to give them confidence to negotiate &
buy the car that's in front of them. If this is correct, then this maybe a cause of TrueCar's low conversion rate (the root cause of TRUE's problem).
Caveat: This workflow scenario I propose is pure
conjecture. Only TrueCar's team has the data and knows the facts.