Industry News & Trends

Product Information is more Influential than Price

Jeff Kershner
Posted onOct 25, 2005 at 7:12 PM
Updated onUpdated on Oct 23, 2008 at 12:13 PM

Jd_power_logoAccording to the latest study from J.D. Power and Associates, online product information is more influential than Price to New-Vehicle shoppers. That’s a shocker to me!!

They also show that New-Vehicle buyers using the Internet has again reached record levels.

Manufacturer Website visitation continues to increase among all new-vehicle buyers, while visits to independent sites such as edmunds.com, kbb.com and others have remained the same. On average, buyers say they rely most on manufacturer websites for product information and independent sites for price related information.

A Quote from the article "There is tremendous market share at stake in the battle to turn site visitors into buyers," said Galbraith. "Manufacturers will continue to move hundreds of millions of marketing dollars toward their online efforts and will become more efficient marketers in the process."

I think it’s funny, better yet, totally ignorant. You have Manufactures dumping millions into online advertising but yet your lucky if 90% of dealerships are spending over a thousand for online marketing. Something doesn’t jive!

WAKE UP People!! (GM’s, Sales and Marketing managers.)

I noticed something else as well..many dealers hire marketing firms for their TV and Print ads. BUT yet so many of these firms have no clue about online marketing. How many commercials do you see or hear that never mention the dealers website?

What’s your Opinion?

Orange_arrow_box_1_4  Click here to read the full Article.

Jeff Kershner
Founder of DealerRefresh - 20+ Years of dealership Sales, Management, Training, Marketing and Leadership.
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    Joe Vraneza
  • October 25, 2005
I think a few things are interesting. Certainly the OEM's are doing a much better job at getting traffic to their sites, and also creating content that adds to the consumer experience. This is the main thing that is separating the third party sites from the OEM's. I think all 3 segments can improve by combing content with price, in different ways of course, to better direct the process. Dealers should try to understand what buyers are looking for, and make sure they have that content on their sites also. The study gives some good direction in that regard. As an industry, we need to work on moving the dealer's own website farther up in the first visited, last visited, and most useful categories to further help GM's etc. see the light, and draw a clearer picture of just how much impact the internet is having today. From a dealers' perspective, there's power in controlling the process. We need to continue to work on getting truly local, in-market buyers to a dealer's site. This will continue to push the internet's influence on dealer selection, which is one key area which JD Power says is moving the most.

In regards to your comment on dollars being moved online by everyone except local dealers, I see it slightly differently. Today there just aren't many options for dealers. I mean, if you had 'extra' money (try not to laugh) and wanted to spend it advertising online... what would you do? Sure, you have some local "news" and entertainment sites, but dealers have discovered that those are not truly targeting in-market buyers, and laser targeting is the most compelling thing about interactive ads. News sites just don't pencil. Classified sites are good, but they are limited to just used car shoppers. The lead sites (Dealix, ABT, etc.) are forced to hide the dealer branding/web site ad components for the sake of their model, and who knows what they are really doing with the leads, or where they are coming from anyway. SEO seems to hold the most promise, but only because it's the new kid on the block. I can fast forward to a time where paying $20 for an unqualified "click" will sit about as well as paying $20 for a Donald Duck lead does today. So, there aren't too many choices available today for the dealer who actually believes the internet is affecting his business, and wants to move more dollars to the medium. I see that most dealers are seeing traditional media not reaching people like it used to, and are instead just not spending as much. We at kbb.com think we have it (mostly) figured out, but moving the needle with the old dogs takes time.

Stay on course.. there is light around the corner...

Best-
Joe
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