Shift Magazine - February 2020 - 18

Data, personalization key to creating omnichannel retail experience
BY LINDSAY VANHULLE

conversation about omnichannel retailing in the automotive industry inevitably brings up Amazon.
The e-commerce giant is widely credited as a leader
in bridging brick-and-mortar - its Whole Foods chain,
its Amazon Go convenience stores - with the digital marketplace it pioneered.
Why is Amazon so successful? Experts say the company uses
data to learn about its customers and then tailors recommendations for them, regardless of whether they're shopping in-store
or online.
That seamless shopping experience is headed for dealerships, as consumers increasingly demand more ability to buy a
car online. At a time when it's easy to buy nearly anything over
the Internet, vehicle sales haven't kept pace.
Omnichannel retailing refers to a smooth transition among all
the ways a shopper might buy a vehicle, whether online through a
desktop or mobile site or in person at a showroom.
Some auto retailers are moving in that direction. CarMax,
the nation's largest used-vehicle retailer, says its omnichannel
approach should be fully in place in February 2021, although
most of its markets will have some access by the end of this
month.
Large public dealership groups are enlisting technology to
help shoppers complete various steps of the process online.
Lithia Motors Inc., for instance, tested an omnichannel program
for used vehicles at 14 Pittsburgh-area stores.

KNOW IT ALL

The key to a successful omnichannel buying
experience is leveraging data that dealers
have at their fingertips, industry leaders said in January at an event for
Shift that coincided with CES in
Las Vegas.
"A dealership is sitting
on a gold mine of data,"
said David Boice, CEO
of Team Velocity, a marketing company that
serves the auto industry. (See the Q&A with
Boice on Page 27.)
An ideal experience
would be for a dealership to know all of a
18 shift * february 2020

customer's information, from name and address to payoff schedule and service history, Boice said. Yet too often, he added, that
experience isn't available because dealerships simply aren't using
the data they have.
Creating omnichannel vehicle shopping starts by centralizing
data about a consumer across all the different touch points he
or she might have with a dealership, said Teresa Meehan, vice
president of digital advertising for Autodata Solutions, sponsor
of the Shift event.
That way, "when a consumer walks into the dealership, the
salesperson would actually have everything they need to service
them," Meehan said.
That would avoid a situation in which a consumer spends time
configuring a vehicle or building a deal online, only to have to start
from scratch when he or she gets to the dealership, she said.

BUILD TRUST

There are challenges to making that transition, namely the
number of vendors that dealerships work with and getting them
to seamlessly integrate with one another, said Diana Lee, CEO
of marketing firm Constellation Agency. New data privacy laws,
specifically the California Consumer Privacy Act that could generate copycat legislation across the country, also will put limitations on how businesses can use consumer data.
And several panelists noted the need to create trust with consumers that an online transaction is safe. Some are hesitant to
enter Social Security numbers and other personal information to
qualify for an auto loan.
Experts have said that consumers are more
likely to part with sensitive information if
they believe they'll get something of
value in return, such as a faster
or more convenient purchase.
"As long as you're doing
it in a way that provides
value to that consumer ...
we're actually OK with
it," Amanda Saunders,
industry go-to-market
manager for technology company Nvidia,
said at the Shift event.
"We will give away
our information for that
experience." ■

Shift Magazine - February 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Shift Magazine - February 2020