Digital Dealer - November 2019 - 37

S A LE S & VA R IA B LE O P S : D I GI TA L R E TA ILIN G

By Melanie Borden
VP of Marketing,
Celebrity Motor Cars

Digital Retailing
Part 3: Digital
Influence
Over the last few
months I have been
traveling down the road of
digital retailing, a journey
that the auto group I work
for decided to take with a
few select dealerships. The
dealership group I manage
all the marketing for is
Celebrity Motor Cars, all
luxury brands Mercedes,
Lexus, BMW, Maserati and
Alfa Romeo based in the
New Jersey/New York
tri-state area.
If you are just joining
me, I have defined for you,
in my previous articles on
digital retailing as a way
for automotive retailers to
provide an e-commerce
shopping option and offer
a transparent transactional
type of experience on their
website. For the in-store
retailing experience, its
seamlessly incorporated
and interweaved from their
website into their brick and
mortar dealership's sales
process.
The digital retailing story
is one with many chapters
and constantly evolving
based on customer online
behavior and technology;
like social media. We live in
a society that is constantly
moving and evolving with
technology -- technology
that is bound to transcend

through all purchasing experiences, including buying
cars. The retailing online
experience for auto dealers
has been present and available over the last 10 years,
but the technology has
evolved to what we can do
on our websites, transactionally speaking today.
According to Hedges and
Company, an automotive

not there prior. Due to digital
influence, anyone can arrive
at a decision from what they
found online. Techopedia
defines digital influence as
the ability to create an effect,
change opinions and behaviors, and drive measurable
outcomes online.
Some of the feedback
that I've received on my personal social media from my

...ONLINE AUTOMOTIVE
ECOMMERCE MARKET
WILL PASS $12B IN 2019
IN THE U.S., PROJECTED
AT $19B BY 2022."
market research agency,
"Online automotive eCommerce market will pass
$12B in 2019 in the U.S.,
projected at $19B by 2022."
In the past, you could not
get as far as you can today
with the vehicle online
transaction.
The information available
for customers who are shopping for vehicles has drastically changed, impacting
the tech to evolve as well.
Customers today are more
educated about buying cars
than they were 20 years
ago. This is due to technology and the availability of
online resources that were

previous articles is clear;
the digital retailing concept
in our industry as we know
it is not new, and there are
many voices on this topic.
Today, having the ability to
utilize this on your website
is an added benefit for your
customers, not a dealership facility replacement.
Our customers want to feel
confident they made the educated choice with buying
a car from us at a fair price,
and this is all connected to
the overall experience both
online and in-store.
So, what are some benefits we are seeing from implementing digital retailing?

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

At our dealerships that have
started utilizing digital retailing, the general managers
shared with me that having
our application both online
and in-store completely eliminates the first pencil, giving
the sales consultants the
autonomy to work their deal
directly with the customer,
which allows the customer
to participate in creating a
positive experience.
Eliminating the first pencil
gives the sales consultant
more independence and
less dependent on the
desk for numbers. This
frees up some of the desk
manager's time, helps them
focus on other items, and is
well received by the sales
consultants. It's relatively
simple for anyone to get
trained on how to use the
in-store versions of digital
retailing, being user-friendly
and fast to use in-store for
both the sales consultant
and finance manager.
For our customers who
want to bypass the sales
process and complete the
process online, we can do
so, creating another positive
customer shopping experience.
MELANIE BORDEN, a
Fashion Institute of Technology
graduate, has spent the majority
of her 14+ year marketing
career in the automotive tech
industry. Melanie has worked
in various atmospheres from
social media startups to a public
tech company in consulting,
marketing, and business
development roles. Presently,
she is the VP of marketing for
Tom Maoli's Celebrity Motor Cars
auto group where she develops
and implements all facets of the
marketing strategy and built the
in-house advertising agency.

NOVEMBER 2019

37
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Digital Dealer - November 2019

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