General Motors CEO Dan Akerson says the company wants to allow customers to buy cars over the Internet. “We want people to start buying cars over the Internet,” the executive said during a quarterly earnings conference call with analysts. He added that the move might be “a potential half-step away from our traditional channels.”
“It doesn’t mean we are going to try and bypass our dealers, but why not in this tech-savvy culture we have, this economy we have, allow the millennial to come in and ... sign and go,” Akerson said, according to a Detroit News report.
The CEO referred to customers generally younger than 30, who usually know what model and options they want and are already aware of the price before entering a dealership, as they look up for information on the Internet.
According to the National Automobile Dealers Association, ten years ago, car buyers made an average of 4.5 visits to a dealership before buying a car. Nowadays, the Internet has deeply affected that habit, with shoppers only making 1.3 visits before deciding on a model.
GM launched a pilot program about a year ago with a web tool called Shop-Click-Drive that allows customers to search for vehicles, get pricing, chose financing and get a trade-in estimate only by using their computer or smartphone.
The carmaker wants to roll out the program nationwide by the end of the year to all 4,300 dealers. Currently, about 100 dealers use it. GM said about 900 sales were made through Shop-Click-Drive at the end of September, but only five of them were completed entirely online.
By Andrei Nedelea
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