The Retail Automotive Industry

Simply Selling More Cars Won’t Be Enough: Revolutionizing the Retail Automotive Industry ​Dale Pollak believes that the car business—and the dealers who make their living in it—are in more trouble than anyone cares to admit. After four decades and three best-selling books, Pollak has witnessed the trials and triumphs of the retail automotive industry from a vantage point that few get. While car dealers are making good money, he warns that the industry is at a critical turning point, with too few paying attention to how inefficiency and lack of transparency are sapping the industry’s true potential. Amid the ever-faster confluence of technology, the Internet, and changing consumer preferences, the future prosperity of the industry is far from secure. Like I See It offers practical solutions, such as making the sales process more customer-focused and digitally driven to encourage sales, managing new and used inventory to mitigate margin compression, and ending factory bonus checks. It spurs much-needed conversations and sets guideposts that help dealers, OEMs, and solution providers improve how they do business. It also shows dealers how to stay relevant, evolve to keep up with the changing times, and deal with issues like high personnel turnover and the coming disruption of ride-sharing, self-driving cars, and Millennials who don’t want (or can’t afford) to own a car. Pollak believes that success will come to dealers who recognize that each customer engagement is a chance to make a positive impact and create a bond. He offers a collectively minded approach that will help build a better, more profitable, and prosperous retail automotive industry for tomorrow.

The automotive industry is still one of the world's largest manufacturing sectors, but it suffers from being very technology-focused as well as being relatively short-term focused. There is little emphasis within the industry and its consultancy and analyst supply network on the broader social and economic impacts of automobility and of the sector that provides it. The Global Automotive Industry addresses this need and is a first port of call for any academic, official or consultant wanting an overview of the state of the industry. An international team of specialist researchers, both from academia and business, review and analyse the key issues that make vehicle manufacturing still the world’s premier manufacturing sector, closely tied in with the fortunes of both established and newly emerging economies. In doing so, it covers issues related to manufacturing, both established practices as well as new developments; issues relating to distribution, marketing and retail, vehicle technologies and regulatory trends; and, crucially, labour practices and the people who build cars. In all this it explains both how the current situation arose and also likely future trajectories both in terms of social and regulatory trends, as the technological, marketing and labour practice responses to those, leading in many cases to the development of new business models. Key features Provides a global overview of the automotive industry, covering its current state and considering future challenges Contains contributions from international specialists in the automotive sector Presents current research and sets this in an historical and broader industry context Covers threats to the industry, including globalization, economic and environmental sustainability The Global Automotive Industry is a must-have reference for researchers and practitioners in the automotive industry and is an excellent source of information for business schools, governments, and graduate and undergraduate students in automotive engineering.

Nothing defined the 20th century more than the evolution of the car industry. The 2020 decade will see the automotive industry leap forward beyond simply moving people geographically toward a new purpose: to become a services industry. This book takes readers on a journey where cars will evolve towards becoming “computers on wheels." The automotive industry is one of the sectors most profoundly changed by digitalization and the 21st century energy needs. You'll explore the shifting paradigms and how cars today represent a new interpretation of what driving should be and what cars should offer. This book presents exciting case studies on how artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics are used to design future cars, predict car efficiency, ensure safety and simulate engineering dynamics for its design, as well as a new arena for IoT and human data. It opens a window into the origins of cars becoming software-run machines, first to run internal diagnostics, and then to become machines connected to other external machines via Bluetooth, to finally the Internet via 5G. From transportation to solving people’s problems, The Future of the Automotive Industry is less about the technology itself, but more about the outcomes of technology in the future, and the transformative power it has over a much beloved item: cars. What You’ll Learn Explore smart cities and their evolution when it comes to traffic and vehicles Gain a new perspective on the future of cars and transportation based on how digital technologies will transform vehicles Examine how AI and IoT will create new contexts of interactions with drivers and passengers alike Review concepts such as personalizing the driving experience and how this will take form See how self-driving cars impact data mining of personal data Who This Book Is For Anyone with an interest in digital advancements in the automotive industry beyond the connected car.

Master's Thesis from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - Marketing, Corporate Communication, CRM, Market Research, Social Media, grade: A (Distinction 1), Edinburgh Napier University (Marketing Management and Research), course: MSc Marketing, language: English, abstract: Current regulatory and technological change factors force the development of an integrative multi channel approach over the whole car purchasing process to increase customer value and profit. Since the decade of multi channel services, the understanding and analysing of consumers behaviour gains more and more part in literature. Although if the adoption of new channels and particular channel usage is researched, further need of understanding why consumers use some channels rather than others, although purchasing the same products, is identified. Especially the automotive market is mainly focussed on product and manufacturer branding topics rather than distribution and service development. Using the example of the automotive industry this paper explores factors of influence on channel choice. Based on current literature and exemplified by a quantitative explorative study the present paper focuses mainly on the question asking after the main determinants on consumers channel choice during car purchasing and their nature of influence on it. A conceptual framework is developed, which argues that channel decision making in the automotive market is based on product, consumer, channel and organisational dimensions of determinants. Product and consumer characteristics are basic considerations influence the evaluated importance of channel related factors like experience, convenience, risk, price, entertainment and service. Finally the organisation itself with their reputation and offered range of products and services has to taken into account. The preliminary model could be viewed as a starting point structuring the understanding of the complex area of channel choice in a particular context

The Japanese automotive industry enjoyed spectacular success in the 1980s. This was largely due to the so-called 'Lean Production System' - the combination of an efficient production system, an effective supplier system, and a product development system. In the 1990s the industry fell on hard times because of the Japanese asset price bubble and extreme currency appreciation. In this book, eminent industry specialist Koichi Shimokawa draws on his thirty years of research and fieldwork with Japanese and American firms, to show how the Japanese automotive industry has managed to recover from this difficult period. He shows how firms like Toyota were able to transfer Japanese systems to overseas plants and how they have changed in order to compete in increasingly globalized markets. In addition, the book also addresses the two major challenges to the current industry model: the rise of China and the environmental and energy supply situation.