Products/Software Archives | Page 45 of 67 | Auto Remarketing

Beepi says work with traditional players ‘very valuable’

For Beepi president Owen Savir, working with some of the more traditional players in the automotive industry can be a mutually beneficial strategy.

And in the online car-buying startup’s young history, it has already made moves in that direction.

Ally Financial announced last month that it would be offering consumer auto financing products for vehicles purchased on Beepi, providing its financing products to Beepi customers on nearly all makes and models. It was also reported last week by Fortune that Chinese automaker SAIC Motor Corp. led Beepi’s latest round of funding.

Interestingly enough, on the same day that Ally announced the deal with Beepi, fellow startup Vroom purchased independent dealership Texas Direct Auto.

Vroom had previously announced it would be providing services to dealers in November, and its $19 million Series A equity funding round included well-known folks with automotive ties: Steve Berrard, the former president of AutoNation and Blockbuster, as well as former football player John Elway, who has also made a name for himself investing in car dealerships. Not to mention, companies like Cox Automotive, AutoNation and General Motors are trying out models themselves that take a different spin on car-buying. 

In a phone interview this week, we asked Savir of Beepi what he sees as some of the benefits to working with traditional auto industry players at his company.

“It’s a very interesting thing that we’re seeing, where these established companies now turn to start-ups like Beepi in order to invest and fund the next big thing,” he said. “For us, it’s definitely very valuable. Having a partner like Ally that can help us finance all the Beepi buyers, who can help us understand how to do it better; having a partner like SAIC, with years of experience in the business, with the kind of exposure that they have, with the kind of connections that they have is helpful to us.

“And, of course, from the other side, them partnering with us is also beneficial to them, with the new kind of customers that they’re getting, with the market segment that’s continuously increasing, everybody wins in the end,” Savir continued.

So, for startups and more established auto industry companies alike, perhaps this is the beginning to a new way of doing business.

There certainly have been similar changes in the way people shop for cars, something that Savir alludes to when asked about the progress his company has made in the iOS app it announced in December.

The app, launched Dec. 10, lets shoppers buy cars completely through an iPhone. The response to it has “surprised us,” Savir said. Although most still use their PC or laptop computer to actually buy the car via Beepi, usage of the app is growing rapidly, and consumers were ready to use it from the get-go, Savir said.

“When we first launched the app, we kind of thought about it as a discovery channel. In our minds, people were going to use the app to browse cars and find something that they like, and then finalize the transaction via their desktop or laptop computer. Because we said that we found it hard to think that someone would spend $50,000 or $100,000 online to buy a car over their iPhone. And in reality, the day that we launched the app, we already had buyers who were using the app to buy cars,” he said.

“What’s interesting is, to see that … people do it, and actually do it pretty quickly. So, I’m sure you know the research that says people on average, spend about 18 hours researching and negotiating before buying a car,” Savir continued. “And right now we see that the average buyer, the average app buyer, spends around 29 minutes while browsing and buying a car.

“This is exactly the big difference that we keep talking about between the old way of doing things and the new way of doing things, where you buy a car like you buy a pair of shoes on Zappos. And you have that peace-of-mind that if things don’t go as you wanted them, if the car isn’t to your liking, you can always send it back. And the experience is great,” he said.  “And so that’s really the new way of doing things.”

MyDealerOnline adds $1M to funding coffers

MyDealerOnline announced Wednesday that it bolstered its funding by receiving $1 million right before the start of the new year.

Having now received a total of $3.25 million in funding, the digital solution that allows dealers to broker wholesale inventory straight from their own websites says the additional funds will help it focus on increasing its subscriber base, encourage growth among its partnerships, and expand international efforts.

“MyDealerOnline helps dealers engage with more retail customers by offering greater inventory selection to a wider audience,” said Scott Stephens, the company’s vice president of business development.

According to MyDealerOnline, the B2B service provides dealers with access to greater inventory selection without increasing their working capital requirements or overhead availability. The service secures inventory from local auctions around Philadelphia, nationally and from auctions abroad.

To learn more, check out its site here.

GM ride-sharing initiatives unite under single brand: Maven

Various areas around the world, including college campuses, cities, residential areas, and peer-to-peer platforms have already or are in the works to be affected by General Motors’ vehicle-sharing initiatives. On Thursday, these initiatives united under one new GM brand: Maven.

According to GM, Maven’s mission is to give customers access to highly personalized, on-demand mobility services. Globally, the Maven team has over 40 employees with experience in the connected-car technology industry as well as ride- and car-sharing experts from Google, Zipcar and Sidecar.

“GM is at the forefront of redefining the future of personal mobility,” said Dan Ammann, GM’s president. “With the launch of our car-sharing service through Maven, the strategic alliance with ride-sharing company Lyft, and building on our decades of leadership in vehicle connectivity through OnStar, we are uniquely positioned to provide the high level of personalized mobility services our customers expect today and in the future.”

Here’s a breakdown of Maven’s expanded global offerings, as listed by GM in its news release:

City: Maven is announcing that it is offering its car-sharing program to more than 100,000 people in Ann Arbor, Mich., initially focusing on serving faculty and students at the University of Michigan.GM vehicles will be available initially at 21 parking spots across the city.

• Additional city-based programs will launch in major U.S. metropolitan areas later this year.
• Maven customers will experience seamless smartphone and keyless integration with the vehicle. Maven customers use its app to search for and reserve a vehicle by location or car type and unlock the vehicle with their smartphone. The app also enables remote functions such as starting, heating or cooling and more. Customers can bring their digital lives into the vehicle through Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, OnStar, SiriusXM radio and 4GLTE wireless. Each vehicle will provide an ownership-like experience with the convenience of car-sharing.
• Maven pricing is simple and transparent and includes insurance and fuel.
• As Maven grows, the team will use innovative ways of connecting personally with customers. Ann Arbor Maven users will have direct access to Maven leadership and core team members via the messaging application WhatsApp to share their experiences, ideas and thoughts with the team as they help shape the Maven service.

Residential: In the first quarter of 2016, Maven will launch car-sharing services for Chicago residents in partnership with Magellan Development Group. Maven is also expanding its existing residential program in New York City (previously called Let’s Drive NYC) with Stonehenge Partners giving users on-demand access to vehicles and preferred parking options. Both programs combined will offer service to more than 5,000 residents.

Peer-to-Peer: Existing global initiatives include peer-to-peer car-sharing through the CarUnity market place in Germany. Nearly 10,000 users have signed up in Frankfurt and Berlin since mid-2015.

Campus: Various programs are running on GM campuses in the U.S., Germany and China to refine and test future Maven commercial offerings.

Karl Brauer, senior analyst at Kelley Blue Book, compared today’s automotive business environment to the early days of commercial Internet.

“The personal transportation industry in 2016 is feeling a lot like the Internet world of 1999,” Brauer said. “There's a massive collision occurring between start-ups and established brands, all of them jockeying for position in an uncertain world. The Maven launch will give GM broader reach in this dynamic atmosphere, but nobody knows which of these alternative transportation systems holds the greatest long-term potential. This is why we're seeing a shotgun approach coming from multiple automakers.” 

Another KBB analyst, Jack Nerad, also the company’s executive editorial director, believes this is not only a learning experience but also a solid marketing opportunity for GM.

“While there is some debate over how important ride-sharing services will be in the future, there is no doubt that the top global car companies want to have exposure in the space and gain learnings from early adopters.  A pilot program like GM’s Maven can not only provide those learnings but can also be a marketing opportunity, exposing GM vehicles to groups that might not otherwise consider them.”

Cox Auto on its technology: ‘No holes in the offerings’

Eighty million auto shoppers. That’s how many people that Cox Automotive — through the websites its companies manage on behalf of dealers, as well as via Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book — touched last month alone.

That’s according to Mark O’Neil, Cox Automotive Software’s chief executive officer, while speaking with American International Automobile Dealers Association president Cody Lusk on the topic of Cox Auto’s digital reach in the automotive space during Tuesday’s AutoTalk Series.

And that reach has expanded since Cox Auto’s acquisition of Dealertrack Technologies, which O’Neil is formerly the CEO of. He expanded on how that agreement came to be, which he said involved a two- to three-year courtship.

“I’d say, in a short sentence, the reason it came together is that I think we both concluded that we were better together than apart,” O’Neil said. “We had a much broader suite of solutions than we ever would have had individually. And those solutions that we both represented individually, when put together, were not only very complimentary but would let us impact the industry much more significantly in a combined way than either one of us could have done individually.”

So what are O’Neil’s plans, now at the head of Cox Automotive Software? Let’s go back to that huge number of shoppers that are impacted by the Cox Auto’s various outlets on a daily basis — and the data trails they leave behind.

“We’re talking about a huge amount of customer information that we’re beginning to collect and we’re beginning to understand,” O’Neil said. “And the importance of that is we think as we start to aggregate this data and we start to analyze it, we will very readily understand consumer behavior, perhaps better than any other technology company in the automotive space. Because we have more data, by far, than any other player. I mean by multiples, whether it’s three times, five times, ten times, depending what player you look at, we are by far the largest consumer-engagement company from a data side.”

This statement led Lusk to ask the question that many individuals in the industry are probably thinking quite regularly; Is there anything else that Cox Auto wants to buy?

“At this stage of the game, I would say there are no holes in the offerings. Certainly nothing substantive,” O’Neil said. “If you said, ‘What about CRM? What about websites? What about DMS?’ Any of the big holes have been completely plugged. We have terrific offerings.”

O’Neil then immediately jumped into another hot topic that is on the minds of everyone in the industry looking into the future as anticipated catalysts — self-driving vehicles. And the Cox Auto Software leader made some hints at what we may be able to expect in the future in terms of the company’s involvement in the automotive technology landscape.

“And really, as the autonomous vehicle evolves more, there may be new technologies that are more appropriate for us to acquire than to build ourselves,” he said. “On the same hand, we are staying very close to OEMs. We had an OEM approach us recently saying that they want us to sit down to talk about a five- to 10-year plan in technology. They wanted to share with us their vision for technology and figure out how we can work together to deliver things like a virtual test drive, a much more autonomous or self-directed purchase process within a store environment.

“How could we use touch screens and technology within stores to make a much more engaging experience? I think, for the most part, the OEMs are going to have us on their radar and involve us way ahead of how they would have traditionally involved us, which is very much after the fact,” he continued. “Now we’re going to get ahead of the game with them. I think that’s going to help us close any gaps by planning in advance and starting to build technology.”

But what about staying on-top of the industry’s technology landscape. What if new “holes” appear in Cox Auto’s coverage?

“But should we miss anything particular or if a new piece of technology pops up that we think is very exciting, I think the nice part is that Cox has a terrific balance sheet and enormous resources,” O’Neil said. “They think very long term, in terms of five-, 10-, 15-year plans. And I think they’ll give us the capability to acquire anything that we think makes sense for the portfolio that we don’t have today.”

One interesting avenue that you can plan on seeing Cox Auto take in the near future is a bundling of its offerings, especially within the technology space and between its various offerings.

“We do anticipate doing more bundling, particularly in the software arena,” he said. “We’re just starting to think about the concept — in fact we’re going to pilot this year with a group that will test a rewards program amongst Cox more broadly. So that, you know, maybe today you’re primary user of Manheim or Autotrader and you don’t use software very much. You might be able to earn reward points from that that you can use toward software purchases. Or on the flip side, maybe you’re a very heavy software user and you’re not a big user of some of the media services like Autotrader or KBB or Manheim or NextGear or some of our other assets within Cox Automotive. Those rewards points could go that way.”

Edmunds targets trade-ins & leads with new tool

Edmunds.com launched a new product Wednesday that will allow dealers to connect with consumers looking to appraise their vehicles — and potentially generate used-car inventory and new leads for the dealer.

So, how does Edmunds MyAppraise work?

It begins by connecting with consumers who are already logging onto Edmunds (either by mobile or desktop device) to get the True Market Value of their respective cars.

If one of those users wants to sell his or her car, he or she can choose to request offers from local dealers partnered with Edmunds. The consumer enters the VIN and answers a few questions about the car’s condition through the tool, and he or she is also asked to photograph the vehicle at specific angles.

The latter, Edmunds says, helps dealers verify the condition of the car and generate a more accurate estimate of its value.

Dealers are then sent the responses, photos and customer contact information. Dealers can respond with a specific quote via text.

 “Edmunds MyAppraise combines many of Edmunds’ most popular car shopping innovations to deliver a concise product that makes it easier for shoppers to trade their vehicles and for dealers to engage these highly-coveted customers,” Edmunds president Seth Berkowitz said in the news release announcing the product. “This isn’t just a lead-generation product: It also gives dealers a high-tech platform to deliver the customer service experience that consumers have come to expect in this era of mobile commerce.”

Berkowitz, joined by Edmunds executive director of product development David Robinson, said in a follow-up interview with Auto Remarketing that beyond simply receiving a “benchmark value,” consumers are interested in getting something that’s more “directional.”

In other words, what is a dealer actually going to pay for that car?

Roughly 500,000 people a month use Edmunds.com to appraise their vehicles, the company said.

And that may even be a low estimate. In recent months, Berkowitz said, there have been around 600,000 people looking for appraisals. During peak months, that could approach 800,000.

And here’s the thing: though they’ll still spend time researching and so forth, only about 2 percent of the appraisal traffic will submit a lead to the dealer, the Edmunds execs told Auto Remarketing.

Part of the potential for Edmunds MyAppraise is for dealers to be able to further engage that appraisal traffic. But again, as Berkowitz notes, it’s not just about lead-generation.

Consumers are expecting a quicker process when it comes to the appraisal, something one might find in the CarMax model, they noted. Through this product, Edmunds aims to help dealers bring more of that expediency.

And furthermore, the goal is that dealers, through this product, would get to see these potential trade-in vehicles before they end up hitting the used-car market, the Edmunds leaders said. 

Dealers can buy cars online from private sellers via new platform

A fully transactional e-commerce platform launched today by Car Lister allows dealers to buy used vehicles from private individuals — and take care of scheduling the inspection and transportation — directly from a mobile device.

In essence, the Bring Your Best Offer program connects dealers with private sellers, who are given “a direct pipeline to a dealer network looking to boost inventory,” Car Lister said.

“The BYBO program is the first of its kind for private sellers, and is the next step in bringing car selling into the 21st century,” Bryan Harmon — founder and chief executive officer at Car Lister parent company DreamWare — said in a news release.

“Our primary goal with Car Lister has always been to offer new, stress-free solutions that help improve the car buying experience,” Harmon added. “Our social platform was the first step in opening the doors for dealers and consumers to easily connect with one another across vast geographic plains, and our BYBO solution takes the process one step further.”

How it works:

• The private seller uses the Car Lister app to list his or her car for sale. The private seller provides a VIN and selects the option to receive offers from dealers on that car.
   
• The app then creates a listing title and vehicle description. The seller can upload images and video.  The listing includes a free vehicle history report.
   
• Dealers have seven days to make a silent bid on the car. The seller can accept the highest bid at his or her discretion.
   
• Should the seller accept the bid, then comes the inspection. That is performed by a qualified mechanic from YourMechanic (a Car Lister partner) who goes over to the seller’s location.
   
• If the car passes inspection, transportation is done via uShip, which gets ahold of the seller to arrange vehicle pick-up and delivery to the dealership.
   
• Once the dealer confirms the car is on his or her lot, the payment is transferred to the seller’s bank account.

More on Car Lister

For those unfamiliar with Car Lister, it is an app where sellers can list and buyers can shop for new and used cars via smartphone, tablet or desktop. Its parent company is DreamWare, a Naples, Fla.-based provider of Web applications and services to boost mobile e-commerce.

Harmon, the founder and CEO of DreamWare, spoke to Auto Remarketing in late December about the origins of Car Lister.

“We got started based off of e-commerce. We had a legitimate problem to solve in a different industry for accuracy of data, and just tried to scale. It really wasn’t solved before, and we were able to get that to work,” he said of DreamWare. 

DreamWare would expand to other industries, including the automotive business, where it noticed a similar problem.

“This would have been three years ago, and at that point, initially, the way that every other website was listing a car for sale by the general public was, in our eyes, wrong. Three years ago, you still had to come up with all the titles, all the description — on Craigslist you still have to — from scratch … it was all on you, the user. So you had to come up with your own definitions and your own everything. And that actually has a real problem for accuracy. And especially to harness the power of the Internet, it’s an even bigger problem.

“And what I mean by that is … before the Internet, if you were to list your car for sale in the newspaper, and you didn’t really explain it properly, well, that’s OK. Because why? The person would actually come to your house to pick it up, to test drive it, to vailidate it. But on the Internet, it doesn’t work like that. The Internet allows access to that listing from outside of a 25- to 50-mile radius. It offers it throughout the whole country,” Harmon said.

And allowing anybody to just list a car in any form or fashion they choose, without knowledge of the car industry, can be problematic, he said.

“A used car is a one-of-a-kind object. It’s serialized, with a VIN number. So, to me, if I put a car in front of 100 people on these old systems and say ‘list a car,’ you’ll have a 100 different definitions, because everyone is going to type up slang, sentence structures the way that they want … you’ve got different definitions. That’s impossible: it’s a one-of-a-kind serialized object. So we controlled the flow of data differently and we saw that wasn’t being done.”

With this and other issues the company saw in that space, they continued to research. “And as we dug, dug, dug, dug, dug deeper, we realized there wasn’t a system that was full transactional for third party,” he said.

This presented an opportunity for the company. DreamWare launched Car Lister in October 2014, and it went live for dealerships and users in January 2015. 

More information can be found at www.carlister.co.

DriveItNow, Purple Cloud team to retarget online dealer ads

Online pre-qualified monthly payment marketing technology DriveItNow finalized a partnership on Tuesday with Purple Cloud, a provider of retarget marketing for dealers.

Executives explained that Purple Cloud technology will reinforce DriveItNow’s monthly payment shopping process by driving shoppers who abandon the dealer website back to complete the buying process.

DriveItNow’s patent pending technology can display real monthly payments using dealers’ lender programs and consumers’ actual credit bureau information, without the need for Social Security numbers or birthdates and adversely affecting consumer credit.

Purple Cloud’s advanced marketing platform can tracks and targets consumers on dealer websites, offline marketing collateral and across premium website publishers using retarget marketing through a single dealer website integration.

The companies went on to mention online customers who abandon or do not start the DriveItNow monthly payment shopping process will see dynamic, content specific,  retargeted ads encouraging them to come back to complete the shopping process.  Clicking the ad brings the customer back into the process improving the overall experience. 

“We are excited to partner with DriveItNow given their proven results of increasing sales for auto dealers,” Purple Cloud chief executive officer Josh Shatkin-Margolis said. “Combining DriveItNow's monthly payment shopping process with our feature-rich retargeting tools allows consumers to do their research and then be brought back to continue the buying process with the dealer.

“This digital marketing partnership keeps the car dealership firmly in consideration throughout the vehicle shopping process,” Shatkin-Margolis continued.

According to comScore, retargeting has the highest brand lift of all forms of digital marketing at 1,046 percent. Product-specific dynamic ads have been shown by eMarketer to be noticed by three out of five online buyers.

“We are very pleased to partner with Purple Cloud to bolster the completion rate of our monthly payment shopping process and increase auto dealers' sales,” DriveItNow president Tarry Shebesta said.

“Their vast experience and proven tools significantly increase engagement by guiding customers back to the dealer’s website to reclaim lost sales opportunities,” Shebesta went on to say.

Cox Auto broadens role in CDK third-party access program

CDK Global announced Friday that it is enhancing its Third-Party Access (3PA) Program with expanded participation from Cox Automotive’s variety of solutions.

According to CDK, the aim of the agreement is to allow dealers the ability to more easily access their vital data and to ensure reliable and secure management of that data.

"At CDK, we understand that an ecosystem exists where our dealer clients utilize many third-parties for a variety of services," said Bob Karp, CDK’s president, Automotive Retail North America. "The 3PA Program was built to enhance integrations, allow secure data access and provide transparency to the types of data being utilized. We believe that allowing data to flow in a consistent, secure and transparent fashion is beneficial to dealers across the industry. Cox's participation in the 3PA Program demonstrates our joint interest in supporting a responsible ecosystem for all dealers."

Here’s the list of Cox’s solutions currently available via CDK’s 3PA program, as listed by the company:

• Service offerings for both Xtime and ServicePro, including appointments and inspection
• CRM offerings for VinSolutions and Dealertrack
• Inventory merchandising and analytics via vAuto, HomeNet, Dealer.com and KBB
• Marketing Services from VinSolutions and Dealertrack
• Dealertrack F&I offerings, including Desking and Menu

Mark O’Neil, chief executive officer of the Cox Automotive Software Group, elaborated on his company’s participation with the 3PA program.

"We are pleased to be working with CDK to enable deeper integration of data to help dealers run their dealerships more effectively," O’Neil said. "We are committed to ensuring that our mutual dealer clients have uninterrupted access to the solutions they rely on today."

Here are the tenets of CDK’s 3PA Program, as listed by CDK Global:

• Helping to prevent the corruption of data: When data corruption occurs, it can be costly and time intensive to fix. Vendors certified by the 3PA program have protocols in place to help make sure data integrity remains intact and dealers can focus on their day-to-day operations.
• Managing secure access: Using a CDK-approved interface, dealership employees can spend less time doing unnecessary data entry and benefit from increased security.
• Improving data syndication transparency: Dealers can also actively monitor access to their data and see where their data is being syndicated.

To learn more about the CDK Global, click here.

Autonomous features appealing to car shoppers

When you’re driving down the road, how many of the cars in motion around you are being physically driven by fellow humans? More often than not, all of them.

Thinking of an answer to this question, today, may seem quite silly. By the time our millennial readers are old and gray, however, it won’t be.

It’s well known that a variety of auto manufacturers and outside technology companies are preparing for the day that autonomous driving becomes mainstream.

In fact, a small percentage (8 percent) of the 175 automotive executives in 21 countries that IBM surveyed in its Automotive 2025: Industry without borders study think autonomous vehicles will be in mainstream use as soon as in the next 10 years. A much larger percentage (38 percent) think they will at least be in limited use in the mainstream market.

“But how does that affect my dealership today?” you may ask.

Well, there are plenty of autonomous features that are currently hitting the mainstream — and consumers want them. The technologies may not be driving the cars for us yet, but with lane-departure warnings, autonomous braking, and guided cruise control, it’s safe to say we’re perhaps not that far from it.

Autotrader recently presented the findings of its 2016 In-Vehicle Technology Shopper Influence Study at the 2016 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and a not-so-surprising percentage of consumers would like more autonomous features in their vehicles.

After surveying a panel of over 1,000 vehicle owners online last year, Autotrader found that 70 percent of the consumers surveyed are more likely to consider a vehicle with autonomous features, such as parking assistance, collision avoidance and automatic braking.

One interesting finding, fleshed out by Autotrader’s associate research manager Rachelle Petusky, is that these in-car technologies are changing what many consumers perceive to be a luxury vehicle.

“When we ask consumers about what defines a luxury vehicle, traditionally in the past consumers have broken it out by automakers that play in the luxury space, such as Audi or BMW,” Petusky said. “But technology’s really changing the game, and non-luxury vehicles are starting to be viewed as a luxury vehicle because of the technologies offered in the car. Things like Wi-Fi, lane change assistance, collision avoidance are helping consumers perceive non-luxury cars as luxuries.”

Since this is the second year that Autotrader has conducted this study, Auto Remarketing asked Petusky what the biggest change Autotrader has seen seen in consumer expectations over the last year.

Petusky pointed to the 77 percent that want a car with all of the technology features they want regardless of car color.

“Probably the biggest change that we saw was the fact that technology is becoming even more important than car color,” Petusky said. “Car color, I think, has been a part of a huge conversation. It still is very relevant in the purchase decision, but technology is definitely going to have more of an impact now than it did last year.”

While Autotrader finds that the majority (60 percent) of the consumers surveyed think self-driving vehicles are a dangerous idea, there are plenty that are more than willing to pay extra for the new technologies that are out today.

Forty four percent of those surveyed said they would pay up to $1,499, which Petusky says is a bit of a “magic number” in the technology package pricing game, for an in-vehicle concierge service. And 65 percent said they would switch brands to get the features they want.

On that note of branding, while Petusky says that in the immediate term it isn’t that cost effective to upgrade used vehicles with some of the new features that are coming out, the used cars that are most popular in the future will be heavily dependent on who adapts what technologies in their new vehicles now.

“But I think as automakers and technology companies figure out how to make it more cost-effective, it is going to start shifting consideration,” she said. “We’re already seeing some consumers that are shopping for new cars that are going to switch brands if the technology that they want isn’t in the car that they want.

“So I think even as people are looking at used cars, it may change which used car they’re considering depending upon which manufacturer is earlier to the game to introducing new technologies in their cars.”

These new technologies are also expected to not only change how automakers certify used vehicles in the future, but also impact the value that used cars retain.

“I think there’s definitely certain things that they’re going to have to check to make sure they’re functioning properly,” Petusky said. “Our sister company, Kelley Blue Book, is actually seeing that vehicle technology is impacting the valuation price of used inventory.

“I think that vehicles that are in good or excellent condition that have that additional technology in the car, it’s just going to be a way that they can ask for a higher price point and that inventory is going to move faster compared to certified inventory that doesn’t.”

Petusky also thinks that dealers and aftermarket companies that can add some of the more affordable new technologies, especially backup cameras, to older vehicles, can reap the benefits.

“That’ll really be a way to differentiate themselves from other dealers,” she said.

There is one feature that customers don’t necessarily care for their vehicle to have completely integrated: navigation. Fifty seven percent said they would rather manufacturers focus on better integration with their smartphones, while 39 percent said they would prefer the navigation system on a smartphone rather than one built into the vehicle.

“We definitely see it continuing to swing toward people wanting to just use the navigation system that’s in their phone,” Petusky said. “But they are wanting that to easily integrate into the dash. Some of the other apps and functions that people are doing on their smart phones now they are willing to surrender to the dash.”

GM tops IHS loyalty awards

Two of the Big 3 automakers were recognized during the 20th Annual Automotive Loyalty Awards presented by IHS Automotive this week.

General Motors was honored in the category of Overall Loyalty to Manufacturer for the 2015 model year, while Ford won the Overall Loyalty to Make category.

According to IHS, the automotive loyalty awards recognize auto manufacturers and brands for customer retention and conquest efforts during the 2015 model year.

During the model year timeframe, which stretched from October 2014 to September 2015, 8.2 million consumers returned to the market for a new vehicle. Citing record levels of loyalty rates for both brands and manufacturers, IHS found that 51.5 percent of the consumers that returned to the market repurchased from the same brand as their previous new-vehicle purchase.

59 percent repurchased from the same manufacturer (but not necessarily the same make). Both of those metrics increased by over 1 percent compared to the results from model year 2014.

IHS says it expects these loyalty percentages to continue to increase.

“With the number of consumers returning to market expected to peak in 2017, and conquest efforts and competition on the rise, an increased level of focus will be required to continue driving higher volumes of loyal customers in the market,” said Steve Had, vice president of sales and marketing solutions at IHS Automotive, during award ceremony Monday evening. “The good news is that manufacturers are consciously emphasizing loyalty programs and dedicating resources to loyalty and conquest efforts as they fight for every point of market share.”

IHS’ data also shows that 14 percent of the industry is made up of consumers, coined as “super loyalists,” that have returned to market three times to purchase from the same manufacturer. Those that have returned the last two times are called “loyalists,” and make up 26 percent of the industry.

“Our analysis, which leverages the insights of Strategic Vision’s New Vehicle Experience Study (NVES), finds that Super Loyalists and Loyalists are far less susceptible to defection following a disappointing ownership experience,” Had said. “Other customers with less frequent repeat purchase behavior are almost twice as likely to defect compared with Super Loyalists The use of our insight and analytics to further understand these consumers can be key to bringing them back into showrooms for repeat purchases.”

Here’s the overall list of automotive loyalty award winners, provided by IHS: