According to research released by DMEautomotive in the U.S. on August 19, mobile app users become more frequent visitors to a dealership’s service department after they download the app. The study looked at 307 dealerships nationwide that offer a dealership-branded mobile app and compared the 6-month service visit frequency of consumers after installing the app, versus prior to downloading the app.
According to the research, after users downloaded a dealership’s mobile app, stores witnessed the following:
- A 25% increase in 6 month service visits after downloading the app;
- A service visit frequency rate that grew 3.7 times faster compared with non-app users.
“These are remarkable findings,” said Marcie Hopey, Director of Strategy for DMEautomotive. “While most dealers may think a branded mobile app is a ‘nice to have,’ this proves that not only do apps engage customers in unprecedented ways, they also deliver significant incremental service revenue.
DMEautomotive estimates an annual lift of $144,000 in incremental service revenue for every 1,000 app users.
“This is striking evidence that a dealer-branded mobile app designed to keep customers engaged drives real service revenue,” said Mike Walther, President and CEO of DMEautomotive. “Combined with our previous research showing that a customer with a dealership-branded mobile app is 73 per cent more likely to buy a vehicle from that dealer than a customer without one, and app users spend 7 per cent more on their vehicle purchase than non-app users, it’s clear that apps have a profound and positive revenue lift on both the service lane and in the showroom.”
The DMEautomotive research studied over 2.2 million consumer records between April 2013 and June 2014. The study covered a mix of 307 dealerships, representing multiple brands, store sizes, and regions, all of which offer Driver Connect, DMEautomotive’s dealership-branded mobile app, to their customers.
For further details on mobile app users vehicle purchasing behaviour, click here.
