Scion studying Amazon.com-style online selling tactics

You can pretty much buy anything off of the Internet. Whether it’s a house, boat, car, or just a new TV, the Internet has become, amongst a number of things, a worldwide shopping mall. As a result, Toyota’s Scion division is talking about adopting Amazon.com-style online retailing tactics in order to appeal more to the brand’s youthful customer base.

The idea is that the buyer configures the car to his or her liking, finds it using the regional inventory, gets his or her credit approved, and makes the purchase at a no-haggle price. Now all of this sounds pretty familiar since you can already get quotes and can build your prospective car to your liking. However, Scion wants to do this without the customer even setting foot in a dealer as vehicles can also be delivered to the customer’s house.

“People shop for homes online when they are moving. People buy boats online. So why not a car?” said Jack Hollis, Scion’s vice-president.

And these experimental trends aren’t new to Toyota as Scion has been considered a Petri dish to new ideas for ToMoCo in general. And Hollis is a firm believer that the Amazon-style approach goes well with Scion.

So what does that mean for the dealers? People can still go into dealers to test drive and buy cars, but Hollis said that he expects the dealers to become more of a concierge service if anything.

“It isn’t a large percentage [of the total market], but it’s our percentage,” he said. “Gen Y kids have been connected their whole lives with Amazon. Youths are not buying cars the same way or speed as other generations.”

– By: Chris Chin

Source: Automotive News