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Do you adjust your price for different sites?

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JesseJ

JesseJ

Boss
Mar 22, 2011
113
5
First Name
Jesse
#1
I know this has been discussed in different topics but I was curious about some opinions. Some inventory management tools will allow you to set a different price for third party sites than your own website. Generally it seems to me like it makes sense for third party pricing to be lower. How about craigslist? Would you change pricing at all knowing full well that you can expect any interested lead to haggle relentlessly?

One more question along the same lines...say you manage to own a vehicle on your lot for far less than you would expect. KBB retail is as much as $6k higher than you own it for. Happens. Do you list at the suggested price or common sense price based on your market...or do you blow the car out by offering a tremendous deal in the hope of moving the car quickly?
 
#2
Price should be the same among all sources. Doesn't really take much for a customer to find your "best price" - even after they have bought the vehicle!

The only time I would advocate pricing variance is for tracking - old school way - works good for the dealer that doesn't have call tracking and/or wants a lazy man way to do some tracking. Last two digits of price indicates source, not perfect but it does help. IE - Same car would be listed for 16,977 - 16,966 - 16,955 - etc etc.. 77 AutoTrader.com, 66 Cars.com, 55 Craigslist. If a customer calls or comes in about the vehicle that was $XX,X77, you know they were on AutoTrader.com.

Again, not perfect... but it works.
 
#3
3 Day AutoTrader Exclusive Sale!


I'm with ya Jesse! Years ago, I asked HomeNet to create a simple export to Autotrader (or site of my choice) where the price gets dropped by X and the special export inserts a custom sale message ahead of the existing comments (i.e. "3 Day AutoTrader Exclusive Sale!...") After the sale expired the default export overwrites the sale export (returns it back to where it was).

If it worked, then I wanted phase 2 to allow me to add criteria to sweeten the ROI. Examples like Overaged units only, or, a MiniVan Sale only (3 Day MiniVan Sale, we're overstocked, all offers considered...")

I LOVE the idea, HomeNet couldn't do it.

Ed Brooks, thoughts?
 
#5
I used to do this but I have my dealers on a pricing tier structure for markdowns. Since this is for tracking purposes only - I have removed this practice from our process.

Not that it's a big deal but I would have a few circumstances where the customer thought we were trying to get another whopping $10.00 on the price of the vehicle once going into the write-up. Of course if the sales person knew what ad sources the customer had originated from, we wouldn't have had the objection to begin with. :)

Not a bad practice for ad source tracking though.
 
#7
JQuinn said:
Same market-adjusted price everywhere.
Click to expand...
John, you and I agree 100% on this. Mark it in your calender (I sure did) It's a good day!:D

I can't see how the potential upside of making a few extra bucks on one deal could outweigh the potential downside of losing entire sales by appearing underhanded by having multiple prices on the same car. In addition, depending on your state's AG, there me be some legal issues as well.

In my mind only two (ish) factors come into play when setting a car's asking price;
  1. The price range of competing vehicles in your market (filtered down to trim, major options, CPO status, etc.)
  2. The Supply / Demand situation (Market Days Supply) on that specific vehicle in your exact market at this particular moment in time.
Now for the "ish", I would most likely get more competitive as the vehicle ages and this is all dependent on the car being "all there".

Factors NOT being considered include my history (don't care if I hit a home run 9 months ago) and how much I have into the unit. My market - today - will determine what I can expect to get for the vehicle.
 
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#9
Oh my God, a 3 day exclusive sale is a no-no? Where's the creative thinking?

How many manager/owners here HATE AutoTrader/Cars because they can't "see" their shoppers hit the floor? This forces the shopper to show their hand.

AG doesn't like 2 different prices for the same item? Then half of the internet is illegal. See PriceLine.com, Ebay and a zillion other aggregators. Are you saying it's ok for a 3rd party to reduce your price... but not you?

Google "online price only", you see AT&Ts policy "Package offers are only available online" and 11million others.

God forbid I turn on the light in that dark AutoTrader.com closet!
 
#10
JoePistell said:
AG doesn't like 2 different prices for the same item? Then half of the internet is illegal. See PriceLine.com, Ebay and a zillion other aggregators. Are you saying it's ok for a 3rd party to reduce your price... but not you?

Google "online price only", you see AT&Ts policy "Package offers are only available online" and 11million others.
Click to expand...
Joe, I only know what I hear. Perhaps someone who knows "compliance" could weigh in. My sense is that "internet only" pricing wouldn't be a problem if the transaction were completed online, ala AT&T, Barnes and Noble, eBay, etc. The vast majority of car deals are completed at the dealership. What I've heard is the problem arises when you have two different sets of prices for two different sets of customers.
 
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