A modern, digital auto retailing experience will have some consumers complete an entire vehicle purchase online, while others finish parts of the transaction in person before they take the keys.
Either way, "consumers are going to dictate how we define digital retailing," said Dave Zuchowski, an industry veteran who now works as chief strategy officer at digital marketing agency Unite Digital and as senior partner at Motormindz, an automotive consulting firm.
Zuchowski: Key is an ecosystem
"There will be some that take it 100 percent," Zuchowski told Automotive News. "There'll be fewer and fewer that do 0 percent. But I think what will be happening is finding that sweet spot, because as more and more consumers do different pieces of the transaction online, dealerships will get better at it, as well. And we'll be able to become more sophisticated in the tools that we have to meet the customers' expectations."
To improve digital retailing, said Zuchowski — who also is a former CEO of Hyundai Motor America — the industry must focus on the back-end components that make it work, from building an integrated software ecosystem to digitizing documents.
Zuchowski, 62, spoke with Staff Reporter Lindsay VanHulle about digital retailing and emerging technologies. Here are edited excerpts.
On a modern auto retailing model:
Today, you get some people that go all the way [online], because that's what they want.
In the future, are you ever going to get 100 percent of the people that go all the way? I don't think so. And the really important thing we hear is it's consumer choice — what do I want to do? I don't want to negotiate with anybody, I want to land on a price, I want to get my financing, I want to configure my payment, I want to know what my features are, I want all that online. But when it comes down to it, I really feel comfortable going into the store. I'd like to have a thorough explanation of the operating features. I'd like to make a connection to the service so I know how to schedule my service appointments. So it's just going to be dependent upon every individual consumer. The system has to be flexible enough to expand or contract as required to comply with either 0 percent utilization or 100 percent utilization. That's really what it should be, and the consumer is going to dictate what they want.
Right now, what happens more often than not is I can spend, on average, eight hours online doing my research on a vehicle and I go into a dealership, and at that point, the ball is completely dropped and I'm starting all over again. And I have eight hours of wasted investment and research. That's extremely frustrating. So that's got to stop.
On improving technology integration:
We think of it in individual pieces. But if you think of it as an ecosystem, we have an ecosystem that's very tactical. It's not strategic. It's not systems-oriented. And none of those competing vendors or competing platforms talk to one another.
Everyone is layered on top of one another, and it slows things down, makes them much more complex, makes them much more costly. And it's supposed to elevate the customer experience, and it really doesn't do that.
The only way you can deliver on that promise of digital retailing is to consolidate it into an ecosystem where all the players — the OEMs, the dealers, the developers, the information providers, everybody — is in an integrated ecosystem after the fact.
That's a great vision. It's very difficult to get to, and that's what I think everybody's working furiously to try to achieve right now.
On digitizing signatures:
There's, on average, about 65 to 70 documents included in a deal jacket that are mostly signed individually with a wet signature by the customer. It's their OEM documents, there are state documents, there are financing documents, there are dealer documents. We've mapped the process, and there is a stack 6 inches deep of signatures and requirements to buy a vehicle — very complex, very time consuming.
The [Departments of Motor Vehicles] are state-run, not federally run, so there's 50 different DMV requirements. And we've got some states that are going away from wet signatures to electronic signatures that they'll accept, odometer readings, things like that. There's things that you have to attack one state at a time, instead of federally, but it's coming. And it'll pick up momentum.
It'll be like all other emerging technology — there will be a tipping point where all of a sudden, whether it be cellphones or anything else, all of a sudden, everybody is there.
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