As India begins to reel back from the coronavirus pandemic, many carmakers are looking to offer the option for customers to stay on track of their new car buying plans. Hyundai had already introduced its online car purchasing platform called “Click to Buy” and has announced that it has enhanced the platform for a complete end to end solution for customers. Since the Click to Buy platform came to being, Hyundai says that it has received around 15,000 registrations till date with 5-10% of them being converted to sales, which is expected to grow further. On its new online platform, Hyundai says that SUVs are the most popular segment with the new Creta being most in demand. But Hyundai also reports that the interest for the new Verna has been increasing with regards to online enquiries.
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India is said to be one of the largest and fastest-growing markets for digital consumers around the world. Coupled with the apprehension of venturing out in the post-COVID-19 era, online sale are only expected to grow even more. The average time spent on a smartphone by Indian consumers was 3.5 hours before the pandemic but has now grown to four hours in the post-COVID-19 era. In the present world, Hyundai says that 90% of its consumers are digitally influenced, and 70% would prefer to buy products online. Hyundai expects at least 50% of car enquiries to be digital in the future.
This is the reason why Hyundai has decided to upgrade its Click to Buy platform and introduced Click to Buy 1.5 with new enhanced features. The Click to Buy 1.5 portal aims to deliver an end-to-end car buying solution. With Click to Buy 1.5, Hyundai has introduced the option for consumers to be able to check the availability of the dealer inventory for their choice of vehicle and variants, add accessories, warranty and service information, promotional offers, the ability to negotiate with dealers online for discounts, offers and digitisation of online application of loans with digital disbursal of the loan amount. With the new additions, Hyundai feels that some customers will also wish a more personal input, at which point the video conferencing with a sales executive from the dealership will be offered to clear all queries.
Hyundai says that price is a key factor among Indian customers who expect offline offers at dealerships to be offered online as well, in addition to special benefits of online bookings. Therefore, during the process when the dealer representative is assigned to the customer, they can provide a personalised quotation, online car financing, online booking, exchange bonuses for existing vehicles, and full online payment with online loan disbursal as well. While the value of the vehicle being exchanged would require a personal inspection from the end of the dealer, Hyundai is working towards ironing out issues and will constantly update the platform moving forward.
Future of online third-party wheeler-dealers
As most Indian automakers around are introducing their own online car buying platforms, these seem to be solutions which will be used even after the coronavirus pandemic is officially over. This, in particular, could spell trouble for e-commerce wheeler-dealers.
Over the last decade, many third-party online vehicle buying or e-commerce platforms began to crop up. These platforms are designed for online dealing with new and used cars and bikes. Some of these platforms offered more or less end-to-end solutions as well.
But as mainstream carmakers begin to develop their own platforms to sell new cars directly to consumers, it could spell trouble for the third-party solution providers. Carmakers will be able to offer certain benefits that third party platforms may not be able to offer. These include features like online negotiations with dealers, video conferencing and product demonstrations from sales representatives, special offers, accessories, dealer inventory checks and more. In addition, customers will be able to purchase their vehicles without being charged a commission for the service, nor would dealers be subject to the same. Even the evaluation of used car price while exchanging your old car is free in the case of Hyundai.
