Andy Moss, CEO
Digital retailing gaining foothold
Andy Moss, CEO
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Digital retailing and the omni-channel experience were hot topics at this year’s NADA event, according to Andy Moss, CEO of Roadster. He attended many of the keynotes and presentations at the show and noticed a key theme in all of them: digital retailing.
“We’re all impatient, we all get Amazon. The world we live in is all these other retail experiences, so our expectation is that we make it (the automotive experience) seamless, make it efficient, and ensure streamlining takes place in the system,” said Moss.
Clearly consumers have been wanting this for a long time, but Moss also thinks the market is in some ways dictating this shift, and that OEMs also want to have that game there — to have all the new entrants coming into the auto retail space, even as they are reacting to them. But from a dealership perspective, if your margins are getting compressed, the cost of people and benefits, for example, are ever increasing for them.
“We’ve been deep in a digital retailing and online commerce and omni-channel for many years now. It feels like every time you go to the (NADA) show, the rest of the industry takes one more step towards this,” said Moss. “We came to realize that the digital retailing software is perhaps more important in today’s day and age to be in the hands of the salesperson at the store. Having four to six people touch every single deal is still the traditional model. I think the trend is moving closer to a one-person selling model, but it’s not going to get there overnight.”
The whole of the industry is very much accepting that this is how cars will be sold, said Moss, adding that not everybody wants to be on the front line of this dramatic shift or change. Some of them will still be learning from others who have taken the leap first and are making changes, and are pushing it down to the dealer level.
“I think the industry as a whole is evolving and I think everybody knows that this is the way it happens,” said Moss.
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