How Data can reshape the Automobile Industry?

Auto Tech Outlook | Thursday, January 16, 2020

Today, buying and selling automobiles is not just a simple transaction. Organizations use the footprints left by the customers on the website to provide a better experience.

FREMONT, CA: In the past, automobile dealers could not predict buyer behavior, but with the proliferation of big data, they can read consumer’s minds easily. While browsing the automotive website, a dealer may get some useful information about the buyer, such as a person’s name and address but not valuable information such as what vehicle they were looking at. With big data, the insights can be precise to the point where the dealers can find out which photos of the vehicle were clicked on or whether the customer searched for an SUV or a four-wheel-drive vehicle. One of the benefits car dealers can reap is by helping shoppers in finding the vehicle they want which results in customer satisfaction in the long run. They can learn about competition and form strategies and eliminate tactics that are not working.

Dealers have started using big-data to monitor their inventory. With the help of a telematics device called Lynkd, transportation companies can track a vehicle’s location and status, such as its battery or where it is on the lot. For instance, if a customer’s car is in the shop and they have a loaner vehicle, the dealer can track the vehicle within few miles of the store to make sure that the customer’s car is ready.

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Data is not only useful in tracking the vehicle or an entire fleet but also to keep an eye on the competition. However, sometimes data is hiding in plain sight and a database company, the support of a database debugger that specializes in gathering the leftover data when companies transact online is required. The tool can scan or scrape websites to see when vehicle identification numbers were added or removed from the webpages. 

Data plays a bigger role for automobile dealers then they think. It can help dealers determine their progress towards their goals. For instance, if a dealer expected to sell 100 vehicles in a month but sold only 50, the data illustrates whether the market softened or the store did not spend enough on marketing. The majority of dealerships have sufficient data, but they lack in their analysis. Large organizations have the resources to use data to benefit the customers in the long run. According to experts, data was always present; it was just the lack of proper tools and resources that hindered the organizations from taking concrete actions with the data.

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