How is it possible to purchase a new or used car without leaving your home? The answer is simple. Car purchasing has gone digital. Because it’s gone digital, you’re not limited to whatever vehicle is available on the lot. From minivans that can accommodate the entire family on a cross-country road trip to pickup trucks to EVs to SUVs, purchasing a vehicle from any number of online dealers like ShopSmartAutos.com, for instance, is just a matter of booting up your laptop or smartphone.
According to a new report by Motoinsight, vehicle digital retailing is said to be a dealership’s impressive new tool for selling just about any kind of car, truck, or SUV. The digital sales tool allows for more customer engagement and more sales while putting in less work.
The one-stop-shop digital process can be conducted at home by potential customers. It is said to make car shopping more exciting and a heck of a lot easier since you can do it from your bed if you so choose. In theory, vehicle or automotive digital retailing is said to join your digital and physical processes into a seamless experience that can be steered in any direction you choose (pardon the pun).
It allows you to go from the digital web page to the showroom and back again. It also means buying a new car translates into never having to leave your home. Once you choose your car, some dealerships will even go the extra mile by delivering the new car to your driveway.
Defining Automotive Digital Retailing
Says Motoinsight, the digital retailing experience should not be confused with digital marketing. It also isn’t an online inventory platform or a new method of social media influencing. Instead, digital retailing enables the customer to dig deeper into the process of purchasing a vehicle online. It’s said to represent the future of the car buying experience, but you can engage in it today.
Car Buying in the Past
Two decades ago, if you wanted to look for a new car or truck, you visited an average of five or six dealerships before you finally selected the one you wanted. Or so, claims Motoinsight. But these days, customers rarely visit even two dealerships when searching for a new vehicle.
Because of the internet, customers are said to know what they want to purchase and where to purchase it prior to visiting the dealership of their choice. In other words, vehicle consumers are craving a new, easier, more fun way to buy cars, and dealers are more than willing to accommodate them, especially if it means increased sales.
It’s possible you might feel that buying a car on the internet might limit your choices and influence you into making a bad decision. That is not the case. Salespersons working inside brick-and-mortar dealerships have less time to interact with potential buyers which means you get less facetime.
But if you’ve already conducted your research on the internet, you will have already made some very important decisions regarding the vehicle you intend to purchase. Dealer facetime suddenly isn’t as important as it once was.
Digital Dealership Interaction
According to Motoinsight, the challenge that comes with digital car buying is making sure you are dealing with professional dealers. The automotive customer environment has been altered by the internet. The salesperson or sales team you interact with online should not be pushing you any harder than if you were dealing with them in person.
In general, the pushier the car salesperson, the more turned off a customer becomes. Buyers wish to be educated and feel secure in that their hard-earned money won’t be wasted on a vehicle that could possibly turn out to be a lemon.
Shoppers have been using the internet as a digital store for well over a decade (Amazon started selling books in the late 1990s), and today it’s considered the norm. The internet allows customers to be far more informed about the product they wish to buy than they were in pre-digital days. Buying a car for most consumers should be no different than buying a pair of shoes or the next big bestselling novel.
Imagine the last time you perused Amazon for a new television or the last time you filled out a menu request for Door Dash. The car buying experience is now very similar in nature. And you can do it from the comfort of your own home.
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