There are now more avenues for car dealerships to sell their vehicles than ever before but has the part-exchange process truly embraced the transparency of a truly omnichannel customer journey?
Volkswagen Financial Services UK chief executive, Mike Todd, reflects on the sector's rapid evolution and offers insight about what's needed to adapt to the road ahead.
As the new car market declines and EV ownership becomes more widespread, dealer groups are increasingly turning their attention to older vehicles to keep workshops full.
Even the traditionally slender margins that car dealerships make on new and used car sales once all the overheads have been factored in, aftersales is key to profitability.
Aftersales departments have been kept busy for the best part of a decade by a buoyant new car market with each dealerships’ own customer base keeping workshops full.
The coronavirus pandemic accelerated the pace of change in the UK’s motor retail industry and some observers now question whether many of the new habits will stick with consumers when everyday freedoms return.
Motorists have shown uncertainty about the transformation of car makers into tech companies and dealers could be left to explain their franchised partners’ ‘surveillance capitalism’, it has been claimed.
A university student's technology concept that would easily help dealers inform customers of their car's progress through service has won the inaugural Keyloop Dealer Tech university automotive technology competition.
Changing or upgrading dealership management systems does not always run smoothly – Brayleys Cars and Sere Motors have had very mixed experiences
Live chat can extend a car dealer’s ‘opening hours’, better qualify prospects and increase customer satisfaction, but it takes hard work
Suppliers of dealership management systems (DMS) say they are working hard to meet dealers’ demands for better third-party integration
Suppliers of dealership management systems need to do better on integration with third-party systems, reliability and cost, say motor retailers
The president of CDK Global explains why the software company is giving its dealership management systems more of a market focus.
Car dealers will need to adapt to innovations in the car, the workshop and the showroom.
Blended retailing is the title of a concept being used by Volkswagen UK in its dealer network that accepts the digitisation of the sales process and the attention given by all retailers to everything ‘e’, but doesn’t assume the traditional face-to-face contact in the showroom and sales staff with encyclopaedic knowledge of the brand is redundant.
AM's in depth feature on the latest techniques used be dealerships to make sure they have the right used cars in stock.
Audi, Seat and Mercedes-Benz have all used augmented reality on their cars. AM looks at whether the technology can help franchised dealers to sell more.
How franchised dealers can turn online reviews into a positive for business.
Most UK companies have no social media strategy, sports marketing specialist Josh Robinson told members of the AM Executive Breakfast Club at its latest meeting at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, London,
