Video: Is your market ready for auto ecommerce?

Scott Gairns describes the assistance that the Ecommerce Readiness Index provides to car brands developing direct-to-consumer retail channels.

Transcript:

“The car industry has a problem: despite more than half of brands offering an ecommerce solution of some sort, just four per cent of visits are to an ecommerce-specific page. In an era where all brands are becoming more customer focused and looking to pivot from the traditional retail model to something more like an Apple store, this weakness must be addressed. The question is, which markets are ready for ecommerce and how can car brands get their timing right?
Sophus3 has created a new tool to understand which countries are best placed to embrace online sales. Our new Ecommerce Readiness Index brings together multiple data points across macroeconomic conditions, levels of online consumer interaction with car brands, ecommerce activity in other sectors, and the ecommerce capabilities of core competitors.”

“Once a car brand has decided how receptive their customers in each market are to ecommerce, the next decision is to strike the right balance between transacting and choosing. We have already seen how weak the car industry is at engaging customers, but is ecommerce likely to make that even worse as brands try to push more buyers down the funnel?

Sophus3 recommends that you develop a KPI framework that measures business performance without ignoring the customer experience, aggregating a series of ‘micro-transactions’ that reward customer engagement and aligns sales performance with the brand promise.”