CARY, N.C. -

We use them to set appointments at the doctor’s office or the mechanic, while simultaneously searching for everything from recipes to reviews; not to mention the constant thumb-swipe shopping, “iTuning” and “Facebooking.”
The smartphone: often described as the Swiss Army knife of the modern world.

 “We’re tethered to it,” said eBay Motors Clayton Stanfield — a big fan of the smartphone himself —in an interview with Auto Remarketing at the National Automobile Dealers Association Convention & Expo in February.

 But how does the flourishing mobile environment impact the car business, and what are the used-vehicle implications of this burgeoning technology?

We talked to the experts to find out.

Millions & Millions Strong

In illustrating the household inundation of mobile products in our everyday lives, digital marketing expert Paul Potratz puts a number on it. A very large number.

“What is the very first thing you do in the morning when you wake up? Is that thing the same thing that you’re doing when you’re driving down the road, and other people are doing it in their car, also? Is it the same thing that you do when you go to dinner, you go to a restaurant and you’re with your husband or your wife and you’re sitting at the table?,” he asked in the introduction of a video he produced for the March 15–31 digital edition of Auto Remarketing.

“What am I talking about? Using a smartphone. Well, you’re not alone,” he said. “108 million people in the United States are on a smartphone.”

Count Tilo Steurer as one of those.

The founder and buyer at Eurocar — an independent dealer of high-end pre-owned luxury cars in Costa Mesa, Calif. — says the smartphone is probably “an everyday tool now in people’s lives.”

“You and I use these mobile devices probably every minute of every day,” he said.

In fact, within his own business, Steurer says he’s using mobile apps to help in securing inventory for his store up to 10 times a day, depending on what he is looking to buy that day. Dealers are using apps, he says, for tasks like checking prices, finding inventory and pulling vehicle histories. And this certainly helps when a dealer is at an auction and doesn’t have access to his or her personal computer.

“And the (retail) buyers themselves are so versed now,” Steurer added.

So versed, in fact, that the mobile device has become a direct link from the consumer to the dealership.

According to the recent Ford Direct Digital Automotive Shopping Survey, close to two-fifths of shoppers use a mobile device to tap into a dealer website.

Tailoring that data specifically to the used-car market, 91 percent of used-car shoppers accessed a dealer website via their home computer, 20 percent did so through their mobile phone, 10 percent used a tablet and 5 percent cited “other” means, the Ford Direct survey said.

And over at eBay Motors, the company indicates that more than 10,000 cars are bought each week globally through one of its mobile apps.

More of eBay’s Mobile Findings

Just before the NADA conference, eBay Motors unveiled the results of a survey it conducted in the first month of 2013 regarding car-shopping habits in the online and mobile arena.

Though the age group in the study ranged from 18 to 60, a large chunk of its findings highlighted the heavy presence of mobile usage in the millennial crowd, meaning those shoppers between ages 18 and 35.

Here is some of what eBay found about the habits of millennials:

•    A fifth would consider using a mobile device to buy a car.
•    Almost half of millennials (49 percent) say they’re comfortable using a tablet to shop for vehicles; 36 percent of non-millennials said the same.
•    A third of millennials were comfortable using a smartphone to shop for a car versus 22 percent of non-millennials.

Using the Mobile Device at Your Store

Millennials or otherwise, the smartphone may be the first thing people check morning and then habitually (or
compulsively) the rest of the day.

But it’s not just the restaurant, dinner table, car or bedside table where consumers are sneaking a peak at their mobile device. They might also use their mobile device while visiting your dealership.

In fact, eBay’s study found that nearly half (44 percent) of millennials will pull up car-shopping information on their mobile device while at a dealership, and more than a quarter (27 percent) of non-millennials will do so.

The key: embrace it and take advantage of the constant mobile usage to improve your business.

Take the example shared by Stanfield — senior manager of dealer outreach for eBay Motors — about his recent experience at a San Francisco restaurant. There was a sign at the establishment indicating that customers were not allowed to take pictures of their food because it is “distracting to other customers,” he said.

“Our whole dinner conversation, (we said) if that sign had said ‘when you take a picture, use this hash tag,’ they would get a hundred different ads a night,” Stanfield noted.

There are some similarities in the car business. Dealers can encourage using Twitter hash tag codes for their stores, checking in, offering giveaways and so on, Stanfield said. And just as someone may take a picture of a steak at their favorite restaurant — giving that restaurant some added exposure — the same can be done with a favorite vehicle at a
dealership, for instance.

Stanfield also suggests dealers have QR codes in their store that can, for example, allow the customer to access a dealer’s Yelp reviews or Facebook page.

“That’s what we’re teaching dealers now: embrace it,” Stanfield said. “They have the information. They’re going to step out of the room, go to the restroom, look the car up, look up the warranty, look up the Carfax, look up the AutoCheck.

“So, we want dealers to embrace that and just be open with it.”

 What it comes down to, Stanfield says, is being flexible enough to cater to the needs of a mobile-first shopper.

“I think we’ve got to loosen the reins a little bit,” Stanfield said. “They want to shop in a certain way; they want to collect the data. So I think the dealership that does that, they do well.”

For instance, if the customer wants to text about the car, text about the car; adjust your practices to meet the need of the shopper.

And sometimes, the needs of a used-car shopper are different than those of a new-car shopper. eBay Motors provided Auto Remarketing with a few data points that illustrate the differences.

Look at the proportion of survey respondents saying they wouldn’t have a problem buying a car with a mobile device.

Only 9 percent of that crowd would buy a used car with their device, versus 44 percent who would go new.

Interestingly enough, for nearly three-fourths of new-car buyers (72 percent), it was likely they would go to a dealer’s website; only 49 percent of used shoppers said the same.

That said, it’s critical a dealer meets the customer where the customer prefers to shop.

As Kristine Chin, head of motors for eBay Motors put it: “It has become increasingly important for dealers to ensure that they are reaching consumers when, where and how they want to shop for vehicles — which today, more than ever, means online and on mobile.”

Editor's Correction: Kristine Chin's name was spelled incorrectly in the print/digital version of this story, which appeared in the April 1–14 issue of Auto Remarketing magazine.