By Melanie Borden, VP of Marketing, Celebrity Motor Cars

Over the last few months I have been traveling down the road of digital retailing, a journey that the auto group I work for decided to take with a few select dealerships. The dealership group I manage all the marketing for is Celebrity Motor Cars, all luxury brands Mercedes, Lexus, BMW, Maserati and Alfa Romeo based in the New Jersey/New York tri-state area. 

If you are just joining me, I have defined for you, in my previous articles on digital retailing as a way for automotive retailers to provide an e-commerce shopping option and offer a transparent transactional type of experience on their website. For the in-store retailing experience, its seamlessly incorporated and interweaved from their website into their brick and mortar dealership’s sales process. 

The digital retailing story is one with many chapters and constantly evolving based on customer online behavior and technology; like social media. We live in a society that is constantly moving and evolving with technology — technology that is bound to transcend through all purchasing experiences, including buying cars. The retailing online experience for auto dealers has been present and available over the last 10 years, but the technology has evolved to what we can do on our websites, transactionally speaking today. 

According to Hedges and Company, an automotive market research agency, “Online automotive eCommerce market will pass $12B in 2019 in the U.S., projected at $19B by 2022.” In the past, you could not get as far as you can today with the vehicle online transaction.

The information available for customers who are shopping for vehicles has drastically changed, impacting the tech to evolve as well. Customers today are more educated about buying cars than they were 20 years ago. This is due to technology and the availability of online resources that were not there prior. Due to digital influence, anyone can arrive at a decision from what they found online. Techopedia defines digital influence as the ability to create an effect, change opinions and behaviors, and drive measurable outcomes online. 

Some of the feedback that I’ve received on my personal social media from my previous articles is clear; the digital retailing concept in our industry as we know it is not new, and there are many voices on this topic. Today, having the ability to utilize this on your website is an added benefit for your customers, not a dealership facility replacement. Our customers want to feel confident they made the educated choice with buying a car from us at a fair price, and this is all connected to the overall experience both online and in-store. 

So, what are some benefits we are seeing from implementing digital retailing? At our dealerships that have started utilizing digital retailing, the general managers shared with me that having our application both online and in-store completely eliminates the first pencil, giving the sales consultants the autonomy to work their deal directly with the customer, which allows the customer to participate in creating a positive experience. 

Eliminating the first pencil gives the sales consultant more independence and less dependent on the desk for numbers. This frees up some of the desk manager’s time, helps them focus on other items, and is well received by the sales consultants. It’s relatively simple for anyone to get trained on how to use the in-store versions of digital retailing, being user-friendly and fast to use in-store for both the sales consultant and finance manager.

 For our customers who want to bypass the sales process and complete the process online, we can do so, creating another positive customer shopping experience.

About the Author

Melanie Borden, a Fashion Institute of Technology graduate, has spent the majority of her 14+ year marketing career in the automotive tech industry. Melanie has worked in various atmospheres from social media startups to a public tech company in consulting, marketing, and business development roles. Presently, she is the VP of marketing for Tom Maoli’s Celebrity Motor Cars auto group where she develops and implements all facets of the marketing strategy and built the in-house advertising agency.