Keywords for the Automotive sector between now and 2030: Personalization, Virtual Reality and Online.

 

From what emerges from a study conducted by McKinsey, the automobile sector in the near future will be subject to important changes that will lead us to look at it and – for us – to investigate it with new eyes and methods.

The car will be less and less just a means of transport and more and more a set of functions that “leads” to a destination. To a demand that will reflect the personality of the buyers, their style, their needs, you will have to answer with a personalized offer. And personalization will be the key word for automobile manufacturers and dealers for years to come.

An important declination of personalization is linked to Virtual Reality that will and – must – spread more and more at dealerships. In fact, it allows to transform a machine in real time into the customer’s exact request and so .. for all customers! By making use of virtual reality, dealerships will have very few cars on display, significantly reducing one of the main cost items of the industry’s sales and distribution system.

The personalized offer, however, will not be limited to just the characteristics of the car – from colour to infotainment, etc. etc. – but will lead to something truly tailored to the customer and continuously adaptable to his needs. In fact, it is likely that less and less people will end up buying a car, the Car, and more and more they will opt for packages that give access to more cars in a certain period of time. Therefore, you can have a convertible for weekends in the summer and an SUV to tackle the snow in winter.

This will also have an impact on the pricing policies that will have to be adjusted; we will see the passage of product price to service price. Moreover, by service we refer to packages and subscriptions for what is to be understood as a shared mobility. And in fact, you will hear about the price per period or per mileage of use.

At the same time, the availability of online platforms will increasingly lead to transparent and less negotiable prices, where a known and shared price will simply be declined according to the specific modalities of the request.

The digitization and customization of the offer will also reduce search times which, thanks to Big Data, will lead to the choice that suits your needs. Therefore, less research will be done but more “intelligent” answers will be obtained using algorithms that will do all the work. You will therefore spend less time at dealerships where you can arrive with clear ideas, but leaving the seller less margin (in every sense!) of manoeuvre!

The dealerships will therefore have to change. They will be able to be leaner, they will have to be increasingly digitized (and this risks being the only way to survive!), specialize according to the target of interest and make the most of their strength – that is the knowledge of the local reality – to offer a targeted shared mobility service.

The sale will could move online, but no one yet dares to take away the value and importance of a warm handshake.