Vehicle OEMs’ New Online Retail Strategies, Forecast to 2025

Online Vehicles Sales are Expected to Comprise 5% of Global Vehicle Sales by 2025, with China as a Leading Market

The definition of online retail in this research service refers to when a vehicle is purchased (part payment as a down payment/outright purchase) through an online portal, without interaction at a physical dealership; in this case, the sale is considered to be an online sale. The global online retail scene is prevalent in regions such as the United Kingdom, United States of America, and China. Online vehicle sales as of 2018-19 include both a platform where consumers can experience various features of the vehicle and a delivery centre for when the customer completes the entire purchase online on the sales platforms, apps, or websites of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

The motivation for OEMs to take their products online can be summed up as:

• To significantly reduce the time a customer spends at the dealership
• To help enhance the customer experience and create a feature differentiation with other companies that have similar products to offer
• To integrate and monitor dealer performance and backward integration and enhance production in logistics and marketing
• To introduce several vehicles in a new market and to promote less expensive and lifestyle vehicles in some regions

To help OEMs to go digital, multiple entities such as digitization and visualization companies, digital financing companies, and eCommerce providers have created products and services for immediate adoption, thus helping OEMs while they develop their own digital sales platform.

Research Highlights:

• This research highlights how online vehicle retail is expected to change the retail space in the automotive industry. The study covers the four main forms of online retail, namely, direct OEM retail, dealership-driven digital retail, retail through sales aggregators, and eCommerce retail. In detail, the research service assesses the customer journey experienced in these four forms of online retail. The research moves further and differentiates the costs involved in traditional and digital retail formats and how the dealership of the future is expected to be.
• This research service discusses how online sales in the vehicle retail sector performed since 2016, and how it is expected to change between 2016 and 2025. It also tracks how many vehicles are expected to be sold online in various regions. The study profiles all the leading online sales platforms across the various regions around the world and highlights their key features and offerings.
• This research service benchmarks leading OEMs and their platforms across three categories: locations, model/product portfolio, and features. This is done for online platforms from major OEMs.
• The companies covered in this research include Tesla, Hyundai, PSA, Renault, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), BMW, Daimler, Ford, GM, Rockar, BuyACar (Dennis Publishing), Carwow, Alibaba, Amazon, and Roadster.