Hey Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai dealers are you liking your price wall?

[Alex Snyder]

I'm certainly appreciating my Toyota shopping today. I love it when I need to give my name and email address to see the price of a product I want to buy. In fact I'm loving it so much that I'm buying a Ford.

That's what is going through my mind as I'm seeing these new pricing compliance rules and seeing some of them actually in the flesh. I hear Honda has pushed this too and Hyundai is switching to this model soon.

A customer is on a dealership website and has to submit their name and email address in order to view a price less than invoice ....which is every car for the most transparent dealers.

Can someone explain the logic here?

 

[joe.pistell]

OEM Logic:

1. Internet = Lead Gen
2. We're not price whores, they are.
   • Car shoppers hate price whores
3. Hiding prices will make our competitors mad.
4. What's for lunch in the cafeteria today?

 

[Rick Buffkin]

A customer is on a dealership website and has to submit their name and email address in order to view a price less than MSRP

Can someone explain the logic here?

I can't speak for the other two but for Toyota, I'm familiar with. Toyota says if you want to disclose a lower price than the MAPP (Minimum Allowable Advertised Price) price, you have to have the customers information. First and last name and contact info (phone number and/or email). Once you have that info, it's deemed a one to one communication, the gloves can come off and you can quote the customer a price that is lower than the MAPP price and you can be as aggressive as you want to be. Initially, they were against this process you mentioned @Alex Snyder and the only way you could communicate a lower than MAPP price was by phone or email. Then they allowed this process and alot of dealers with certain site providers jumped onboard with it.

<RANT>
I personally don't think that the dealers that are doing this realize that only 2 - 3% of your site traffic actually submit a form lead. The major percentage simply leave the freaking site. Then they (the dealer) sit back and wonder why TrueCar and the other 3rd party sites / lead providers they are getting leads from are closing at better ratios. Hummmm... Lets think for sec... Maybe the visitor is actually getting the information they were looking for on the 3rd party site because they went to your website and they couldn't find the information they were searching for on your site (the price of the freaking car). So, they went to TrueCar and found it there and then submitted a lead that went back to the dealer and eventually came in and bought a vehicle from you. Congratulations, you just paid an additional $300 - $400 to sell that same person a freaking car! :thumbup:Good Job :thumbup:!!!

Please explain to me again why the business is getting tougher, your website forms are converting less visitors and profit margins keep shrinking....
</RANT>

 

[Alex Snyder]

Yup @Rick Buffkin I was wrong. It isn't less than MSRP; it is less than invoice (MAPP). And yeah, the dealers that are trying to be as transparent as possible are the ones suffering on this one.

 

[Alex Snyder]

What's for lunch in the cafeteria today?

exactly. I think that is the biggest question at the largest companies.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Mercedes-Benz has been his way for as long as I can remember. You can only advertise the MSRP and the OEM advertised lease payments. The customer MUST contact you first before you can send them a discounted price. This practice isn't just online but across all advertising mediums.

Would you agree that it does establish a fair playing field for the dealers - not allowing some price whore dealership to run the market and effecting the bottom line for all the dealers in the area?

 

[mikesayre]

Seems like OEM's are trying to work around their needs (and Dealers) instead of the online shoppers.

Here's a fun project, pretend you're in the market, shop your top 3 selling new models against the top competitive brand models in your market area for both lease and buy payments with $0 OOP and with $1,000 total. Do it like a customer would have to online, use any websites (OEM, 3rd party, dealer), and communicate with dealerships if you have too, in any way offered: chat/text, phone, email, or form. Build a history, rank the total value, and study it.

It won't take long to see where the big gaps are in either your own store or your competition's online vehicle shopping process comparatively. Just gathering information online to make next step decisions in the buying process is not that easy across the board, and if you make contact with dealerships with questions to get answers, it's like the wild west. Mass confusion is the norm it seems like, getting specific details is not easy.

After you do this, think about why generally 70% of customers which purchase remain anonymous until they visit your showroom.

Are any of the online shopping process tools doing any thing substantial to build trust with shoppers during this process?

Now pretend shop and order a Tesla: https://www.tesla.com/models/design

 

[Rick Buffkin]

Would you agree that it does establish a fair playing field for the dealers - not allowing some price whore dealership to run the market and effecting the bottom line for all the dealers in the area?

@Jeff Kershner, In theory your right. In theory... What this has done has hindered the pro-active dealers! Period!! Being proactive with inventory mainly. A pro-active dealer is watching the inventory levels, aged units, allocation and a number of other important items to maintain the health of their new car inventory.( Example: A pro-active dealer knows that to get allocation for 4x4 vehicles for winter time, he needs make sure they have enough sales of 4x4's leading up to winter time to get the allocation for them. Not when theres a foot of snow on the ground and then realize he needs 4x4's and not 4x2's). As the units age, the dealer would have a more aggressive pricing strategy on those units to move them in order to get fresher units in stock and simply maintain their inventory levels and allocation. Well... you have a point now that you can't advertise below. You've got a 30 day old Camry and a 6 or 7 month old Camry. Both are priced the exact same. How do you move the older vehicle quicker???? Put it in front of the door at the store???? Thats a question that the OEM can't seem to answer!!! Normally, you would advertise it at a lesser price and move it to keep it from eating into the floorplan. Now you can't because of this BS pricing rule. The only time the OEM is going to roll something out is when it benefits the OEM. Period!! They are not concerned about which dealer sells the product as long as it's their product that gets sold!!! There's an entire laundry list of things I could go into about this. Pricing is just the tip of this massive Iceberg. Simply start connecting the dots between the pricing rules and regs and then roll Tier Two Advertising, the OEM leads and website program into the equation and you'll start seeing some extremely unnerving and upsetting items that most ppl simply over-freaking-look. Why?!?!?!?! Because they are being told it's a good program. They're not asking the question, "Good for who???"!

 

[Alex Snyder]

Would you agree that it does establish a fair playing field for the dealers - not allowing some price whore dealership to run the market and effecting the bottom line for all the dealers in the area?

I think we live in the land of the free. It is a place where we practice capitalism; not socialism. Dog eat dog and get the fuck out of the way you weak-ass pansy. Welcome to America!

In all seriousness, there is a good reason why car dealers don't build cars and the more and more OEMs interfere with retail the sooner they'll understand that they should just stick to building cars.

One must master one thing before he can be a master of another. There isn't a single car manufacturer who has mastered car manufacturing. If any think they have, then I offer up the almighty "recall" as a counterpoint to that belief.

 

[joe.pistell]

Dean Evans, CMO of Hyundai weighs in a new experience they call "Shopper Assurance".
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dalebu...erience-as-good-as-its-vehicles/#50c412d5762c

Evan's 4 pillars of 'shopper assurance':

1. Transparent pricing: "It's not just MSRP and 'call me' on the website... this transaction price lines up with what legitimate third parties are saying for the most part, or we’re really close."
2. Streamlined purchase: "..Shopper Assurance dealers have tech on their website that allows them to do credit apps, approvals, lease payments, get hard trade values so when you come into store you don’t go to credit app and talk about price; you get the keys and let’s do the best test drive you’ve ever had,"
3. Flexible test drive: "We’ll bring it to you,"
4. Worry-free returns: With a money-back guarantee.

Results:
"Hyundai launched the latest version of Shopper Assurance about five months ago. A survey already showed that 61 percent of Hyundai customers said the program played a role in their decision to buy Hyundai over a competitor. "And 65 to 70 percent of our volume these days is conquest. That’s a pretty good indicator"


My Take:
OEM's will be twisting the dials on the DCX (Dealer Consumer Experience) in an attempt to bring the "Amazon CX Halo" to their brand. Selling cars can be a zero-sum game. Hyundai's 'shopper assurance' ROI will drive other OEM's to follow. IMO, seeing the world from a car shoppers POV, the 'shopper assurance' program is a missing link that's directly aimed at Digital Retailing's poor penetration (to date).