Mazda making its mark at the mall
This is shaping up to be the year of automotive retailing revamps. Hard on the heels of Toyota New Zealand’s ‘‘Drive Happy’’ restructure, Mazda New Zealand has launched a retailreboot called Connect.
The first Mazda Connect store opens in Silverdale, 30km north of Auckland, on April 27. It’s part of North Harbour Mazda.
How is it different from a conventional dealership? It’s in a shopping mall and there’s no car yard as such (save three vehicles on display within the store).
There are no salespeople, only ‘‘ambassadors’’ whose job it is to provide information and assistance to the customer, rather than push the product.
Customers can also use the store to configure the new car of their choice on a massive wallmounted touch-screen – in their own time, of course.
On the surface, that’s not too different from the traditional dealership model.
We’ve seen pop-up car stores in malls before, people can still testdrive vehicles at Connect (there are six demonstrators stored in a nearby carpark) and yes, an ambassador can still help you actually purchase a car if you decide to take the plunge.
The difference is in the commitment to a non-automotive location, the presentation of the brand and the attitude towards the customer, say Mazda NZ national marketing manager Glenn Harris and AHG country manager Mike Critchley.
Mazda NZ is a stakeholder in the Connect project: it’s been working with AHG-owned North Harbour Mazda for the past year on this project.
The facility is officially called ‘‘Connect by North Harbour Mazda’’.
‘‘This is not a pop-up store like we’re used to in lots of malls around NZ,’’ says Harris.
‘‘This is here to say. We’ve taken a six-year lease out on this space and we believe this is the future.
Mazda NZ’s stake in the retail project is the first step in creating a franchise format that can be used around the country.
A second store is already confirmed for Wellington: Connect by Capital City Mazda will open in October, in the Queens Wharf area.
‘‘We need to do things differently,’’ says Harris.
‘‘As as a retailer, we need to evolve. Everything’s changing around us; but we in the automotive category [seem to be] the last to change.’’
There are obvious parallels to Apple Stores and the retail concept of a bright young car/ technology-startup company called Tesla.
‘‘If you look at some of the others who have started to make their home in our industry, we have to learn from them: the likes of Apple, Google and Amazon,’’ says Harris.
‘‘Connect is the first embodiment of how we believe the automotive retail model will evolve, and we focus as much on how we present our brand and where we present it, as what we build.’’
Harris says this is the first store of its kind ‘‘anywhere in the Mazda world’’.
Mike Critchley was formerly dealer principal of North Harbour Mazda. Now country manager for parent company AHG, he’s been working with Mazda on the Silverdale store project.
Critchley acknowledges they haven’t got it all worked out yet: ‘‘The retail experience is evolving and nobody knows what it’s really going to look like.’’
Mazda NZ and AHG say the Connect concept grew out of research that showed the number of people who visited car dealerships to ‘‘research’’ a newcar had dropped from 75 per cent to 65 per cent since 2014.
‘‘The digital nature of the world we live in means that people have researched the cars they need and read all the reviews online before they even come and see us,’’ says Critchley.
‘‘They even know the colour they want.’’
‘‘We [at Connect] can supply you with information. We can supply you with an evaluation, because we have vehicles here to test drive.
‘‘We will be able to give people assistance with pricing accessories. At the very end of that process, should they choose to, people can place an order with us.
‘‘But that’s not the main emphasis of this store. It’s going to be evolution to see what the consumer really wants. We don’t actually know.’’
Mazda hasn’t yet taken the leap to no-haggle pricing (as Toyota NZ did as part of its Drive Happy revamp). Harris says the concept has been discussed at Mazda NZ ‘‘for a long time’’, and that the MIA (the organisation that represents new-car distributors) is very keen on driveway pricing across its membership. But there are no plans for Mazda to adopt it in the short term.
And yes, you can talk discounts with a Mazda Connect ambassador.