21 March 2011

At the risk of stating the obvious, doing business through a recession isn’t easy.
The demise of online used-car retailer Autoquake, this week, proves that. Or does it?

Just because visitors to the Autoquake site – there were millions last year – didn’t choose to become buyers can’t all be blamed on the recession.

Autoquake’s model was to offer cars at a competitive no-haggle price without having to enter a showroom.

But perhaps it was this last point that was Autoquake’s undoing.

Low pricing is easy to match. And online, it’s also easy to compare. However, offering a better service is more difficult to match and buyers like talking to trained, specialist staff, knowledgeable about their brand. By Autoquake’s own admission only a third of buyers bought without physically viewing the car or test driving it.

Indeed, in Auto Retail Manager at the start of this year, dealership turnaround specialist Ian Allen pointed out neatly that there can be a lot of difference between two ‘identical’ models on the used car market depending on how they were driven and cared for in an article entitled: ‘You can’t have clicks without bricks’.

Ian’s message is a simple one. The internet is a great way of advertising your business and bringing in customers, but the majority of buyers are still a long way off buying without trying.

Tristan Young
ARN Managing Editor

Tags: Autoquake, online selling