Global business consultancy and accountants Grant Thornton, working with Cox Automotive, have issued their highly authoritative annual Insight Report. It makes very interesting reading and should be studied by anyone with a career in the retail automotive sector.
One key finding is that the gentle transformation from traditional dealerships to agency models that we are currently witnessing will only gather pace and may well become the norm. This will become one of the more visible and far-reaching changes in the industry in coming years.
Of course, we no longer just talk about ‘retail’, we talk about ‘hand over’, where the customer merely accepts delivery of the vehicle to their own spec. The Insight Report predicts an increase in the throughput of vehicles sold or handed over where well-engineered businesses can drive further profits.
Unsurprisingly, the Cox/Grant Thornton report predicts potential vertical integration in car retail, with the manufacturer or NSC owning the distribution as well as the retail or handover end of things. So where does the dealer sit in this, we ask?