What is Digital Retailing?

[Alex Snyder]

Brian Pasch states, in the podcast referenced below, there is no official definition of "digital retailing." He is correct.

Without that definition the term is being thrown around way too loosely and I'm getting "digital retailing" fatigue. I'm tired of it because I don't think a single automotive technology vendor has actually achieved it: a full car deal transacted online. However, there is no definition of it, so one can throw a "Get ePrice" form on a dealer's website and call it "digital retailing."

Can we define it here?

 

[Tarry Shebesta]

Hey Alex!

Unfortunately that term is a moving target and will likely change as new products and services become available. Most products I'm familiar with, and right now they are all similar because of certain data providers being used for part of their functionality, simply offer a limited checkout/shopping cart functionality.

Basically they are taking the current selling process and digitizing it. Nothing new or technologically exciting that actually changes the way consumers currently shop or determine what vehicle they are actually going to buy.

Most dealers I've talked to are seeing lackluster results and some are actually hurting lead volume and sales (will talk in great detail about this in another post).

Just adding a checkout/shopping cart is not what will help a dealer increase sales. You have to get a shopper sold on a vehicle before you can get them to buy, online or offline. It's like "Putting the shopping cart before the horse".

-Tarry

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Check out this #RefreshFriday with Brian Pasch and Cliff Bank - Is Digital Retailing a big pile of shit?

https://forum.dealerrefresh.com/threads/digital-retailing-is-going-in-the-blender.5987/

For more episodes of #RefreshFriday, subscribe to our DealerRefresh YouTube channel.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Based on the dictionary definition one could infer that digital retailing is only achieved upon a truly digital transaction. As of today I know of no "digital retailing" solution that meets this dictionary definition.

Brian Pasch called them solutions that generate "super leads" on RefreshFriday.

 

[Alex Snyder]

We went deep into this rabbit hole.

 

[joe.pistell]

Hmmm.... topics around "digital retailing"

• "roofless retailing"
• "repless retailing"
• "faster retailing"
• "free 7 day return retailing"
• "I don't want a shopping cart retailing"
• "beback retailing"
• "refresh my lease fast retailing"
• "The End of Retailing, retailing" hahaha

 

[Alex Snyder]

Most dealers I've talked to are seeing lackluster results and some are actually hurting lead volume and sales (will talk in great detail about this in another post).

@Tarry Shebesta I'm looking forward to your post expanding on this.

But that an online shopping cart is absolutely putting the cart before the horse. Outside of the Carvana/eBay world (less than 1% of sales) the rest of the buyers still seem to want human interaction. They'll survey that they can't stand talking to a dealer, but they still won't pull the trigger on a sight-unseen vehicle and only a narrowly-presented payment. An online shopping cart must be supported by in-store processes.

It has been over 20 years since the first dealers bought their URLs and website providers are still struggling to get their leads into the hands that touch customers.

 

[Tarry Shebesta]

@Tarry Shebesta I'm looking forward to your post expanding on this.

But that an online shopping cart is absolutely putting the cart before the horse. Outside of the Carvana/eBay world (less than 1% of sales) the rest of the buyers still seem to want human interaction. They'll survey that they can't stand talking to a dealer, but they still won't pull the trigger on a sight-unseen vehicle and only a narrowly-presented payment. An online shopping cart must be supported by in-store processes.

Working on it. There is no one solution for all dealers/makes/geographical locations/demographics etc. Solutions need to be adaptive to all of these variances. A big problem is you have vendors creating solutions that have never sold a car online. They are merely taking the old offline path to purchase and creating portions of it digitally and they are all virtually the same, except for the name. Express This, Easy That, Online Buy Now, Start Your Deal, Accelerate It, and so on. There is not one Digital Retailing solution you can point to right now and say wow!, that's a game changer and it 's bringing me all this new business.

Once someone decides, and is determined, to buy your particular car, they will do it online, offline, whatever. Now, having a good solution that makes it easy for them to transact with you is a different story and does need to be done in a way that will create a positive experience for them.

Digital Retailing does not do much to help bring new buyers into the market or quickly get them zeroed in on the right one for them out of all your inventory. Sifting thru pages and pages of vehicle listings and playing with complicated UIs showing estimated payments and numbers they know are not real, does not instill much faith or help to provide a positive experience.

So to your point Alex, the current shopping cart solutions DO require human interaction.

That's enough for now .....