Bound to evolve
I’ll focus my attention on how consumers buy and sell cars. The future of car buying looks an awful lot different than it does today, or even a few weeks ago. The days of going into the dealership, haggling over price, and getting the runaround from the salesperson (“Oh, let me go check with my manager”) will no longer exist. Partly as a result of COVID-19, and partly because consumers are simply fed up with the experience, car dealerships are finally going to join the rest of us in the 21st century.
Over the coming months, and into the next three to five years, more and more people will buy cars online. Dealers will have to restructure their staff to accommodate these changes. Cars will still get test-driven, and customers will still have questions that need to be addressed, but more and more of this will become self-service. Any reliance on a salesperson or manager will slowly fade away, and consumers will become more empowered than ever before to make a purchasing decision on their own.
Research shows that car salespeople are not considered particularly trustworthy (my dad was one, so I feel somewhat biased to say that not all salespeople are out to get you!), so maybe my “magic 8 ball” assumption for what the future holds for cars isn’t that bold or exciting. It could be that what I’m suggesting is actually pretty mundane and bound to happen. How long will consumers tolerate an untrustworthy purchasing experience on what is typically the second-largest purchase they ever make? Not too much longer, I don’t think
Cars and mobility are bound to evolve and change in ways I certainly can’t imagine in the coming years. Yet, when I look into my magic 8 ball, all I can see right now is a drastic shift in how cars are bought and sold, and that’s something I would bank on.