The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hyundai simplifies dealership experience
DETROIT — Stung by falling U.S. sales, Hyundai is pushing its dealers to modernize the new-car shopping experience, conceding that customers are well-armed with information from the internet before they step on the showroom floor.
The Korean automaker said Tuesday that dealers will post “fair market pricing” on their websites that includes company discounts. Dealers, which are independent businesses, will be encouraged to add incentives they are offering to buyers.
They also will deliver vehicles to customers for test drives and allow people to do paperwork online, including calculation of monthly payments, loan applications and estimating the value of their trade-ins.
“They would rather spend less time negotiating, filling out forms and refilling out forms for the second time,” Dean Evans, the company’s chief marketing officer in the U.S., said of car shoppers.
Hyundai Motor Co. hopes the move will boost U.S. sales, which are down almost 13 percent this year, a far bigger drop than the overall market’s decline of just under 2 percent. The company’s U.S. sales have outpaced the market in only one of the previous five years, according to Autodata Corp.
The decline is weighing on the Korean automaker’s earnings. In the second quarter, profits were halved from a year ago to the lowest level since 2010 on falling sales
in the U.S. and China.
To a large degree, Hyundai relied too much on car sales and didn’t have enough SUV models as American buyers shifted dramatically away from cars. About 16 percent of Hyundai’s global sales come from the U.S.
Before going to a dealership, buyers already know about incentives and what others are paying for vehicles from websites such as Edmunds. com, TrueCar.com and Kbb. com, Evans said. Dealers will be encouraged to match aver- age sale prices shown on those websites, Evans said.
The program, named “Shopper Assurance,” will start in Miami and Orlando, Fla., Dallas and Houston and is expected to go nationwide early next year. Even with market pricing, buyers can still negotiate.
“We’ve listened to our cus- tomers and they want convenience and simplicity,” said Andrew DiFeo, chairman of the company’s U.S. dealership council who runs a dealership near Jacksonville, Fla.
Auto buyer surveys by Cox Automotive, which owns Kelley Blue Book and Autotrader. com, show that satisfaction with the new-car buying process is falling, with only 76 percent of customers satisfied with their experience. Only 51 percent were happy with how long the process took.