Leading the Customer to the Dealer through Car Configurators
In the years before the nineties, people who research on cars they wish to buy had no other way of doing so except to go to a car dealership and walk around a lot to get ideas of what would be the nice features to look for in one. Salespersons are trained to offer the best deals to visitors who would purchase a car right there and then after examining what they had to offer. This was the usual scenario during those years which can be aptly called the dark ages of automobile marketing, and the process is called ‘kicking the tires.’ And nobody offered you coffee. A business card with a brochure is all you get from the dealership.
A visit to a car dealership is no longer needed if you only want to do some research on car brands and the features that you can have on them. It can all be done online through virtual shopping, personalizing you car through car configurators set up by every car manufacturer known. So now when car dealerships receive a visit it often means a sale.
Automobile manufacturers are using the car configurator as their marketing tool. The digital campaign and social media asset of popular car brands now depend largely on car configuration. Now you can boast about your great car design by letting your friends access the site through the means of a Facebook button on the summary page.
It is amazing how through this tool popular brands get an average of more than 3 million hits or more in a month’s time. And this goes true with almost any car brand with the car configurator feature on their website. Most website visitors use the car configuration process.
You can forward you car configuration to a car dealership so that you can get a quote. This is the big sales secret. It has been statistically shown that a fourth of those who forward their configuration and get quotes, do actually end up buying a car.
What one known car brand’s car configurator use is for fusing different components and for leveraging data. Car buying, for them, is something personal. When people start buying a car, they are rational but along the process, they become emotional about the whole thing. So the car configuration was built to assist them using sight, sound, and motion so that it will become one great customer experience.
Some of the well known companies have sold thousands of cars and SUV’s, thanks to the car configurator.
Each car brand may have their own unique car configurator tool in their websites, but whatever kind it is or whatever brand it carries, there is ultimately only one goal that they have in mind, and that is to bring the dreamer to the dealer. Having said that, it is still best to visit a car dealership to check out the features, more of a physical configurator.
Source: http://www.automotive-design.net/auto-motor/why-is-the-fiat-500-such-a-success-story.html
