In the last two months, I stepped into my consumer shoes and cautiously shopped for a new car.
I say “cautiously” because the notion of buying a vehicle — widely known as the second-biggest purchase a consumer can make in a lifetime, after a house — has for a long time prompted in this budget-conscious-Gen-Z-buyer thoughts of “What all might go wrong?” instead of the thrill often depicted in car commercials.
I won’t divulge all the details of my shopping process, but I will note how retail technology made it easier to navigate and get closer to a potential purchase.
My process was a hybrid one. I began by narrowing down to a local dealership, checking its website to see prices and which vehicle models and trims it listed as available and submitting an online form for more information.
One of the dealership’s Internet sales specialists contacted me very shortly after that. Via a series of back-and-forth texts, she informed me the vehicle trim I wanted wasn’t readily available on the dealership lot. But she noted that such a vehicle was in transit and in Montana at that time.
“Rats,” I thought. It wasn’t a problem to wait a few weeks for it to arrive here in Michigan, but once it did, would I be able to get to the dealership before someone else saw it and snatched it up, as is certainly possible in this supply-crunched era?
No sweat, the specialist told me. She could “tag” the vehicle for me, meaning once it arrived on the lot, I would get first dibs on test driving it.
After more than three weeks of waiting, I went to the dealership for that test drive. I ultimately opted to lease that vehicle and recently drove it home.
Car-buying can be a fun and breezier process, of course, if money and such things as being scrupulous about getting a more affordable trim level are not real worries for the consumer. But we are navigating an economic environment in which affordability is a defining concern.
So, dealers, I ask: to what extent have efficiencies in retail technology helped persuade budget-conscious consumers to stay on the phone or in the sales chair?
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