I was amazed to learn that, during the research phase, customers spend 17 to 19 hours, on the internet, before visiting a dealership.  Much of that involves vehicle comparisons but anyone is naive if they don't think that price is a chief consideration.  A recent Cobalt study stated that the average consumer visited eight dealership websites.  These customers tend to be at the bottom of the sales funnel.  At this point, they should have narrowed it down to a couple of different makes and models.

You have to ask, why shop eight different dealer websites?  They're looking for a price.  If they come to yours, and all of the new cars are priced at MSRP, they will likely bounce.  They may chose the “get the ePrice” but if they do, they will go to three more stores for theirs.  That helps to explain the eight dealerships.  Some dealers will dance around the price and get ignored.  The rest will send them a quote at net.net or one or two hundred over that.

What is the point?  Are we not turning buyers into shoppers?  This has been my logic for using market-based pricing for both my new and used cars.

On this board, you see a great deal of information on search and social media.  When it comes to search, are we not spending a great deal of money to draw people to websites that aggravate the customer and encourage them to go elsewhere?  On social media, are we basically doing the same thing?

From personal experience, when I went to market-based pricing my lead count went way up and my closing ratio, as a percentage of leads, was phenomenal.  Shown appointments closed at over 85%.   For those that believe that I gave away my cars, we sold 70% of new and used vehicles and our average total gross profit exceeded the floor.  Most important was the increase in departmental net profit.

I'm hoping for some other opinions.