AutoTrader, a name that echoes through the South African automotive market, boasts a rich history dating back to the 1950s. Originating as a print magazine in the UK, the brand swiftly gained prominence with its ingenious concept of coupling pictures with brief text descriptions to facilitate the sale of various items. Today, I am privileged [...]
The rise of online marketplaces has revolutionised the automotive industry, making it easier for both sellers and buyers to connect and transact. However, one of the biggest challenges for retailers and marketplaces is determining attribution - the ability to trace a sale back to where the consumer first interacted with the product. This is particularly [...]
What type of business are you, a producer or platform business - this will help with identifying the type of data your business will need. As a car dealer, you are both a producer and a platform business, because you have physical products (the cars) that you sell and you use your platform (your website) [...]
E-commerce growth is becoming increasingly important in markets today and this includes e-commerce in the automotive industry. What is the definition of e-commerce within the automotive world? Buying a car online has happened in very small pockets around the world which is not a market norm. Just as AutoTrader produced a magazine and went through [...]
The revolution of electric cars in South Africa is starting will contribute not only to our GDP through the automotive sector. But also to our education sector as more and more demand rises for these electric cars. The automotive industry has enjoyed strong growth in vehicle manufacture and sales over the last decade, but all [...]
Life as we know it has changed as a result of COVID-19. Car dealerships have begun to introduce new ways of selling, online. The unprecedented interruption of our automotive industry has forced us all to start shifting. Shifting our focus more and more to data as the oil in making informed decisions. But how important [...]
There are three concepts that have started rearing their head even more whilst we’re in this pandemic within the automotive industry, transparency and anonymity, the enablers of Automotive Digital Retailing in car dealerships: Transparency: consumers seem to be looking for more information online – the more information they find when they are searching online, that [...]
Car retailing in South Africa as we know it has changed how we buy cars. I don't have a crystal ball to tell you what's going to change in the future, but I can tell you what's not going to exist. Two important factors that influence us as we buy cars: A car is a [...]
I caught up with the co-founder of DigiCars, Abdullah Veraschia. He has a fascinating story specifically behind the birth of DigiCars – a car dealership driven to make an online difference for the South African car buyer. Friendships become business partners At the back of an iconic 2010 in South Africa's history, Abdullah Veraschia met [...]
Car buying search behaviour has show a total of 401 million online searches for used cars (including electric cars) has took place last year (an all-time record and a 40% increase year-on-year). In addition, the average selling price of a used car in the last year was R289 312, an increase of R9 003 from [...]
